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THE FORGING OF PASSION 
INTO POWER 



THE 

FORGING OF PASSION 
INTO POWER 



BY 

MARY EVEREST BOOLE 




NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

1911 






" ,?/ 



" If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." 

Psalm 139. 
" Forge and transform my passion into power." 

Frederic W. H. Myers. 



H. M. 

IN MEMORY OF 

"FRANCES OBRENOVITCH" 

ADVISER OF 

THE TEMPTED AND DESPAIRING 

IN A LAND OF SLAVES 



On the few occasions when you and I have 
met) we have disagreed on nearly every point 
of which we have spoken. 

'But we are linked together by a three- 
fold cord. We have in common the friend- 
ship of "Frances Obrenovitch" and also 
that nostalgia of the abyss and that passion 
for the despised and rejected which have been 
the common basis of character of the greatest 
saints and the most abandoned sinners^ the 
most hopeless mental wrecks and the most 
eminent scientific discoverers of all ages. 

M. E. <B. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

PREFACE 13 

1. INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . . 21 

2. THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION ... 28 

3. ECONOMY OF FORCE 32 

4. DESTRUCTIVE MANIA 34 

5. SUICIDAL MANIA 42 

6. MORALITY AND ART ...... 46 

7. SEX INSTINCTS 55 

8. PROTECTIVE INSTINCTS 65 

9. BALANCE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM . . . 72 

10. THE INVERT CONSCIOUSNESS 85 

11. THE FIXING OF GOOD HABITS .... 92 

12. CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND . . . Ill 

13. HYPERESTHESIA ADUMBRATIONS — HALLUCINA- 

TIONS — HYSTERIA . . , . . .115 

14. MOBILITY AND DECISION 1 32 

15. THE STEADYING OF THE IMAGINATION . . . 136 

16. TEACHER-LUST 141 

17. THE NEW IDEA OF ORDER . . . . 1 45 



PREFACE 

In matters of external advantage the poor must feed 
on the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table. In 
the mental science of how to suspend passion so as to 
convert it into power, the inverse rule holds good. Or 
perhaps it would be a truer statement of the case if we 
said that the same rule holds good in both realms, but 
the classification is inverted : the rich in the goods of 
this world have to ask for crumbs which fall from the 
table of the others. 

Many of the world's wealthy ones appear to be sin- 
cerely desirous to give to us more than crumbs of their 
external advantages. But there seems to be some 
insuperable obstacle in the way. The poor in money, 
health, sanity, culture, and reputation are always with 
us, and the other poor, the poor in the science of forging 
passion into power, are with us too. 

Perhaps one reason why the world's favoured ones 
find it difficult to reach us either to give or to receive 
effectively, is that we, the poor, do not reach each other. 
Perhaps if we were more generous to each other, the 
current thus set flowing might draw with it the possi- 
bility of effective currents being set flowing across 
barriers made by worldly prosperity. 

13 



J 



H Preface 

I hope in this volume to introduce to each other 
various kinds of persons who, in various ways, have 
successfully learned the great art of converting passion 
into power. 

If, or in so far as, any of the world's favoured ones 
should at some future day read, and in any manner 
profit by, the following pages, what they receive will be 
a gift from the poor to the rich, from the sick to the 
healthy, from those who have lacked the advantages of 
education to those who have enjoyed them, from patients 
in lunacy wards to commissioners in lunacy, from over- 
worked and struggling illegitimate children to their 
sheltered and well-cared-for legitimate cousins, from 
Asia to Europe, from Celts to Anglo-Saxons, from de- 
spised and oppressed races to their conquerors, from the 
hooligan class to the respectable, from Jews to Christen- 
dom, from benighted and superstitious orthodox Jews to 
their liberal and enlightened co-religionists, from every- 
thing that is despised and rejected to whosoever is 
honoured by the world. 

But for the present we, the less favoured ones, are 
going to have a little talk together. 

Of those who have assisted in accumulating the in- 
formation contained in this work, such as are still in the 
flesh can claim their share of credit (or discredit?) if 
they like to do so. There is a word or two that must 
be said about some who have passed into the Silent 
Land. 

Nicolas Antoine Boulanger. — Left school a hopeless 
dunce, who could not learn algebra. Died in his fortieth 
year, a good mathematician, and a famous engineer. 
Was one of the Enyclopsedists. Left behind him writ- 



Preface 1 5 

ings from which it appears evident that he had recovered 
the Ancient Secret Method used in Egypt and India 
for training scientific men, engineers, and prophets. 

John Boole. — Made shoes, shortly after the date of the 
French Revolution, in an underground and sometimes 
very damp cellar in London. Kept a French dictionary 
in the drawer with his tools. Set up a shoemaker's 
shop in Lincoln. After his death, his widow, being 
congratulated on the achievements of her son, a dis- 
tinguished mathematician, replied : " Yes ; George is a 
clever lad. But did you know his father, sir? He was 
a philosopher." 

George Everest. — Went to India at sixteen years old, 
in the service of the East India Company. Put himself 
under the tuition of natives of India. Learned from 
them Oriental languages, religion, and philosophy, and 
taught himself European mathematics from books. 
Became Surveyor-General of India. 

George^ son of the above-named John Boole. — Earned 
his own living from the age of fifteen and a half. Was 
prevented from going to college by the necessity of 
assisting to maintain his parents and younger brothers. 
Became distinguished in logic and mathematics. 

James Hinton. — Began life at about fifteen as cashier 
in a woollen -draper's shop. Wrote books on morph- 
ology and psychology that considerably affected the 
trend of science. 

David Marks. — Was brought up at the Jews' Free 
School, and earned his own living from the age of four- 
teen. In his youth no honourable careers were open to 
Jews, except as teachers among their own people, and, 
being really much attracted by the New Testament, the 



1 6 Preface 

brilliant boy was terribly tempted for some years to 
make a profession of Christianity in order to open up for 
himself a possibility of entering some university. But 
by the age of twenty he had finally taken his resolution ; 
to use his own expression, he had decided that " there 
was life in the old ship yet." He came to the conclusion 
that the best Christianity for a Jew is to conduct himself 
and his ritual so that Jesus Christ, if He were on earth, 
might worship beside him with satisfaction. Never were 
more significant words uttered in London than when 
David Marks said to his congregation at Berkeley Street : 
"If the Founder of Christianity came back to earth, 
where would He be to-day? In church? No, but here 
with us, repeating the Shemang Israel as a good Jew 
should, and as He did when on earth." 

On his ninetieth birthday David Marks received con- 
gratulations and thanks from Jews all over the world 
for having pioneered the way for Israel from slavery and 
superstition towards culture and progress. 

But the reformer, in his anxiety to purify the old 
Hebrew ritual from superstitious and misleading accre- 
tions, left out several elements of overwhelming import- 
ance to our knowledge of the methods of culture in 
use in the Sacred Past where men were trained in the 
science of prophecy. These elements have mercifully 
been preserved for us by old-fashioned Jews in Russia 
and Poland and the Ghetto quarters of East London : — 
" This strange people, wading through the ages, bearing 
on their shoulders the burden of their great trust." 

Lucy Everest Boole. — Never at any college. Learned 
chemistry in order to qualify to act as dispenser or 
shop assistant in pharmacy. Became Fellow of the 



Preface 17 

Institute of Chemistry, Lecturer on Chemistry, and 
Head of the Chemical Laboratories at the London 
School of Medicine for Women. 

"Frances" only child of an Irish gentleman of good 
family who died early, leaving her a ward of the English 
Court of Chancery. During an illness which supervened 
on the death of her mother, she was found, by a jury 
consisting of two or three English doctors (who were 
not her peers), guilty of two crimes, viz., incapacity 
for taking care of money, and the habit of using Oriental 
imagery to express thoughts too subtle or too sublime 
to find expression in ordinary English. She was 
imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. The familiarities and 
spiritual promiscuity of such places being intolerable to 
her sensitive instincts, she took refuge in a mode of self- 
protection often resorted to in such cases: she set up 
a claim to be called Queen, and surrounded herself with 
a sort of mock court etiquette. She took the title of 
" Queen of Servia " (Land of Slaves), and the signature 
" Frances Obrenovitch," and occupied herself in studying 
psychology and in acting as a sort of confidante, con- 
fessor, or chaplain to such of the patients (and they were 
not a few) as she could induce to listen to her exhorta- 
tions. I met her when she had been already four years 
in captivity; she was, I think, the grandest spiritual 
force which ever came into my life. She was so little 
under any real delusion about her title that from the 
time she realised my respect for her spiritual instincts 
she forbade me to kiss her hand, or to address her as 
" your Majesty." She suffered terribly from the constant 
companionship of lunatics, some of whom were vicious, 
and of doctors and nurses, all of whom were ignorant of 

2 



1 8 Preface 

psychology, and, though kindly and well-meaning, often 
hideously irreverent. I offered to procure her freedom 
by taking out a certificate as lunatic attendant and 
getting her consigned to my care. The temptation to 
consent was evidently very great. But she had scruples 
about hampering my work and career ; and, after a few 
days of heroic struggle with herself, she not only refused 
to accept my offer, but gave me to understand that the 
continuance of our friendship depended on my abstain- 
ing in future from putting such temptation in her way. 
To her I owe nearly all that I know about adumbrations 
and nostalgias; about the conditions under which 
hallucinations become fixed, and the manner in which 
they can be dispersed ; about the formation of protective 
optical illusions and the prevention of dangerous delu- 
sions. She gave me my first clear insight into the 
systematic use of Oriental imagery as an organic 
scientific notation. To her also I owe — though without 
her knowledge — my clear perception of how a person 
like myself may be led into crime ; for, had Frances ever 
for one hour so far lost her head as to express a wish to 
be avenged, there is no telling what I might not have 
been tempted to do. But Frances never lost her self- 
control or her spiritual judgment; her own influence 
over others gave to her both an awe-struck sense of her 
own responsibility, and a respectful sympathy with all 
persons in any kind of responsible position. Though 
revolutionary in every fibre of her being, she would 
never allow a disrespectful word to be said of any official 
person in her presence without rebuking it. 

"Vengeance is Mine," says the Eternal Pulsator. 
Had Frances remained at large, she would have been 



Preface 1 9 

known only as a pious and well-meaning, but somewhat 
eccentric, lady. By incarcerating her, her guardian 
made of her a valuable factor in that great chain of 
inter-racial sympathies which is so rapidly making all 
races subject to the British crown aware of certain 
subtle dangers to which they expose themselves by 
trusting English officials. 

There was another woman, whose name shall be 
wrapped in silence. She was the "illegitimate" 
daughter of a well-to-do man. She refused to accept 
from her "honourable" father the insolent patronage 
which such men offer to those who have inherited 
their own pride; preferring to face the struggle for 
life in a world of strangers. She bequeathed, to 
some who have helped me, a large share of hereditary 
intellectual power, and a determination to base a true 
morality on solid fact, and not to be satisfied with any 
imitation constructed of parchments tied together with 
red tape, smeared over with white paint, and stuffed 
with corruption. 

MARY EVEREST BOOLE. 



THE FORGING OF PASSION 
INTO POWER 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

This is a book for those who have leisure to think. 
To the hasty reader and the careless critic it has 
nothing to say, beyond bidding them God-speed in the 
perusal of any kind of literature which suits their state 
of mind. 

I am writing for such persons as these : — 

For the voyager to far countries, who can take one or 
two small volumes in his small luggage. It may help 
him to prepare for a better understanding of the relation 
between the people he is leaving behind and those 
whose acquaintance he is about to make. 

For the young mother, who has a little time to read 
on Sunday evening after her baby has gone to sleep, 
and plenty of time to think over what she has read 
while she makes its clothes or holds it to her breast. 
It may help her to steer the child into something like 
its true place in the world in which it will have to live. 

For the cloistered sister who is beginning to wonder 
why she cut herself off from the joys which other 



22 The Forging of Passion into Power 

women prize — provided, that is to say, that she has 
the courage to ask the question of God, and wait to 
hear His answer ; not thinking it necessary to stun 
herself, as the heathen do, with vain repetitions of pious 
statements which she does not believe but only thinks 
she ought to believe. 

For the lady of the demi-monde : — provided she has 
the courage to face her situation calmly in the morning 
hours; not thinking it necessary to stun herself all 
day long with noise, drink, affectations, and the strum- 
ming of unmusical tunes on some unmusical instrument. 

For the man or woman condemned by circumstances 
either to a life of monotonous drudgery or to one of 
dreary idleness, or to a still more dreary round of so- 
called social duties, which are not really due to anyone, 
and of so-called social pleasures which do not please. 

For the man who knows he has something to tell the 
world, but has not found his way to any adequate mode 
of utterance. 

For the paralytic confined to his chair. 

For the felon confined in a gaol. 

And, last and chiefly, for the patient in the lunatic 
asylum. 

For any and all who have, temporarily or finally, 
drifted out of the main current of social life into some 
stagnant (and perhaps muddy) backwater. 

Whoever the reader is, he or she will find the under- 
standing of the book much facilitated by interposing at 
least one night between the end of one chapter and 
the beginning of the next. 

Dear friends, never suppose that, because you your- 
selves are unable to swim in mid-channel, therefore 



Introductory 23 

you are cut off from the great joy of delivering your 
message to your fellow-men and women. 

Thoughts are facts ; and they can pass through 
barriers impenetrable to human bodies. 

Let me help you, if I can, to understand yourselves. 
If you once do that, believe me, you will somehow 
succeed in getting the world to understand you. 

I want to help you, if you will allow me, to learn 
the art (for it is an art, quite as much so as music and 
painting) of the orderly arrangement of thought. 

It is a common mistake to suppose that the Art of 
Thinking can be learned only by thinking of what are 
called "learned" topics. This is not the case. The 
finest music is made not by clashing together heavy 
masses of gems or of precious metals, but by " scraping 
the guts of a cat with hairs from the tail of a horse." 
But you must do the scraping according to the Laws 
of Music. 

The Art of Thinking can be learned, and practised, 
with very homely and even unbeautiful material to 
think about. It is said that the finest poetry in the 
Yiddish language was written by a man who toiled 
seventeen hours a day in a factory and lived in a 
hideous tenement of New York. 

A man in prison once wrote to a woman outside : — 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds, innocent and quiet, take 
That for a hermitage." 

People who are well-to-do, free and cultured, and 
who live in beautiful surroundings, admire those lines 



24 The Forging of Passion into Power 

and find enjoyment in reading them ; but you, who 
are in prison, say, and say truly, that they bring no 
message of comfort to you ; stone walls do make a 
prison for you, and you see no use in pretending to 
deny it. 

You are quite right. Those who offer you things 
written by other people by way of consolation, mistake, 
it seems to me, the whole lie of the situation. Can you 
imagine the delight of writing those verses ; of feeling 
the music of them flow into one from some Source Unseen, 
and through one out into the world ? The material out 
of which the man built up his verses consisted of: — stone 
walls and iron bars. Whatever the material, the joy of 
the artist in the act of creating harmony under 
inspiration is the same. 

" I am a lonely man," said he ; 

" The storm-tossed mariner, alone, 
Echoing back the wild wind's moan, 
Breathes not my loneliness," said he. 
" All alone ; all unknown ; 
Like the sun, like the moon." 

" There is," I said, " a loneliness 
That lights the soul like fireflies 
Dim twinkling under darkening skies ; 
'Tis near akin to happiness. 
All alone it hath shone, 
Like the sun, like the moon." 

" I'm not a manly man," said he ; 
" A worm upon the path, I fear 
The fight for life is too severe. 
They've crushed me under foot," said he. 
" All alone, nothing won, 
Myself I seem to shun." 



Introductory 25 

"A worm there is, a worm," said I, 

" That strives to glimmer on the earth, 
A light for all. Is that not worth 
A life as in the changeful sky ? 

Shines the moon, shines the sun 
Not unknown unto One." 

The writer of these lines had no literary skill, and 
could not write good rhyme and rhythm ; but he could, 
and did, weave the symptoms and symbols of mere 
melancholic passion into exquisitely organic imagery ; 
he translated the sense of hopeless loneliness into the use- 
ful solitude of the light-house, and the sensation of being 
abject like a worm into the vision of a glow-worm. Do 
you think he felt abject or lonely while he was writing 
these lines ? His passion had become transformed into 
power. 

Perhaps some reader may feel inclined to say that his 
mind is neither innocent nor quiet ; that he has nothing 
to think of except anger, hatred, and unsatisfied lusts. 
That is not quite true of anybody ; still, let that pass. 
I am neither parson nor moralist ; it is no part of my 
function to tell you that such passions are wicked. They 
are, in their own way, not bad material for art. If you 
have nothing to think about except stormy passions 
and desires, think about them ; but think about them 
truly according to the laws of your own thinking 
machinery. We cannot all acquire skill in weaving 
words into harmonious verse, but we can all be artists 
in thought and group ideas harmoniously. Whatever 
you have to think about, learn to think according to the 
Laws of Thought. 

If you are on a long voyage across a monotonous 



26 The Forging of Passion into Power 

ocean, learn to think artistically, not only about the sea 
and sky and the sailors' work, but also about the fact of 
monotony. 

If you have become a criminal after being brought up 
" respectably," as it is called, learn to think artistically 
about the relations and the contrast between what is 
called respectability and what is called crime. 

If, on the contrary, you were brought up by thief 
parents, and have nothing in your memory but a life of 
more or less successful dodging of the police, learn to 
think artistically about the relations between your class 
and the police : — there is plenty that needs thinking out 
in that matter, and the world would be the better for 
hearing what you have to say about it. 

And you, young mother, you at least have plenty of 
thought-material close at hand, in your baby's cries and 
smiles. He will begin to cut his teeth presently, and 
the first use he will wish to make of them will be to 
bite you. You have to decide whether you will allow 
him to do so or not. Decide it carefully, according to 
what you know of your child's heredity ; not forgetting 
to take into account the amount of your own stamina 
and power of endurance. Do not forget that, in this 
matter more perhaps than in any other — 

" As we chose in small things always 
We must choose at last in great ; 
For 'tis then the gods deny us 
Our own hand upon our fate." 1 

Now you are going to ask me whether or not you 
shall let baby cut his teeth upon your flesh ! How 

1 Mary Ellen Hinton. 



Introductory 27 

should I know? I am an artist, not a quack-doctor 
with a universal prescription to suit all constitutions. 
Whether a baby ought or ought not to bite his mother, 
depends, as I said, on his heredity and the extent of 
her powers of endurance ; also on her and the father's 
conception of the meaning and use of family life. On 
the father's conception especially. I am trying to teach 
you, not a code suited to all families, but the Art of 
Thinking on the facts presented to you by your own 
life and circumstances. 

And you, whom the world calls mad, you at least 
can have no lack of material for thought. And you 
well know — some of you — that the so-called "sane" 
world is ignorant of much which you have seen, and 
hideously irreverent to much that you feel to be sacred. 
Pull yourselves together, friends, and learn to deliver 
your message in such-wise that the outer world must 
listen, and revere. You do not, you cannot, doubt the 
value of your own message to the world ; many of you 
are certified " megalomaniacs " because you cannot be 
got to disbelieve it. What you most long for is 
that someone in the outer world should believe in it 
with you. Courage, friends; I believe in it, — because 
I have seen. Now, therefore, let us, who understand 
each other, learn some logic together, and write so 
that the world shall understand something of which 
you have caught a glimpse, and which you know to be 
part of the scientific framework round which must be 
organised anything which could claim the right to 
describe itself as an organic art of thinking. 



CHAPTER II 

THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION 

FOR learning the art of the orderly arrangement of 
thought, no previous knowledge is necessary of logic 
or of any science whatever. What is necessary is a 
willingness on the part of the readers not to resist but 
to aid the writer in furnishing their minds with simple 
imagery, derived from various departments of human 
life, including science. 

The imagery will be used, not in order to prove any 
doctrine, but to facilitate the orderly arrangement of 
thought material. When we are trying to put our 
household goods in order, we find it useful to provide 
ourselves with convenient shelves, racks, and hooks on 
which to store them • when we are trying to put our 
thoughts in order, we find it advisable to fasten up in 
our memories a convenient framework of imagery on 
which we can register our thought-processes. 

Let us think of Time as a mass of water in a pool or 

tank. That is to say, Time Past is the water. Time 

Future shall be represented by the air above it. Water 

is continually coming slowly in at the top of the pool, 

and trickling away below into cavernous depths out 

of sight. 

The surface of the pool represents Time Present. 

28 



The Training of the Imagination 29 

Now let us represent the consciousness of an individual 
by a stick floating at the surface of the pool. On one 
end of the stick is written " Emotion and Sensation " ; 
on the other, " Action and Influence." 

Please get this idea fixed up in your mind, before 
you read any further. Little precautions of this kind 
go a great way towards conferring clearness of under- 
standing and preventing fogginess and misapprehension 
of a writer's meaning. Get the vision fixed quite firmly ; 
it is not a mere ornament, but a hook on which you are 
going, presently, to hang a weight, perhaps a heavy one. 

We have supposed the stick lying flat on the surface 
of the water. As long as it does so, it represents 
a consciousness lying wholly in the present time. 

Doctors and other teachers sometimes tell us very 
glibly that sanity and health, and all that deserves to 
be called " normal," consist in being " adapted to one's 
environment " ; all which is not so they call " abnormal." 
This mode of speaking is capable of being interpreted 
in two senses. As usually understood, it is very false, 
misleading the utterers even more than the hearers 
— as indeed slip-shod phrases of doubtful meaning 
usually do. 

Let us look at our mind-picture of the floating stick. 

As long as it lies horizontal it represents what we 
may call the commonplace condition of the conscious- 
ness, which is what some people really mean when they 
use such words as " sanity " and " health." 

The most commonplace consciousness wabbles slightly 
up and down at times ; so that one end dips a little way 
back, or down, into the Past, and the other a little 
way forward, or up, into the Future. 



3° The Forging of Passion into Power 

But there are other conditions of consciousness besides 
the commonplace ones : — genius, asceticism, insanity, 
idiocy, criminal tendency, melancholy, suicidal mania, 
all that is eccentric, abnormal, or out of line with the 
commonplace average proceedings of the age in which 
the individual lives. All of these can be represented by 
a more serious tilting of the stick ; or by its being bent, 
or half broken, so that both ends dip at once into the 
Past, or one half may dip into the Past and the other 
still be in the Present. 

What does all this prove? Nothing whatever. 
What is it leading up to ? I do not know. What is the 
use of it all ? That all depends on the use which you 
may choose to make of it. I have provided the entrance- 
hall of your house of thought with a rack, such as my 
experience has shown me is of convenient form for 
arranging things on. At present, our business is to see 
that the rack is in proper order and well fixed up. 
Exercise your imagination at your leisure, in picturing — 
or, as it is sometimes called, visualising — the floating 
stick. Shut your eyes and see it — first in one condition, 
then another. See it stiff and straight, then bent; then 
half broken. Picture it always with its labels on : at 
one end " Emotion and Sensation," at the other 
" Action and Influence." Picture it, first with one end 
dipping down, then the other ; then bent so that both 
ends dip ; with the emotion end floating, then the other 
end. Go on with this exercise till the slightest exertion 
of your will suffices to put clearly before your mental 
vision a picture of the stick in any condition or position 
that you think of. 

Now, the problem of forging Passion into Power is 



The Training of the Imagination 3 1 

that of changing any position of the stick which repre- 
sents a condition of the consciousness that is not 
commonplace and that is undesirable, into some 
position which represents a desirable one. Which 
positions represent undesirable states and which desir- 
able ones, we shall see as we go on, For the present, 
the business on hand is to familiarise your imagination 
with the stick in all its possible positions. 



CHAPTER III 

ECONOMY OF FORCE 

SURELY the secret of Moral Agriculture is to hitch 
one's Plough to the Great Pulsator and make manure of 
the devil. 

There is no cure for the world's evils except linking 
them together in suitably assorted pairs, in such-wise 
that they neutralise the evilness of each other. 

There can be no adequate supply of heat-force till we 
convert into heat the great devastating meteorological 
forces. 

There will be no stop to the supply of criminal classes 
till the brutal and rowdy type of hooligan is trained as 
magnetic healer to the over-sensitive, over-intellectual, 
over-conscientious, over-refined type of man and woman. 

There will be no stopping the spread of insanity till 
different types of abnormal neurosis act as magnetic 
healers to each other. 

There can be no sound scheme of education till we 
know how to assort children in pairs and link them so 
that they give each other a strong impetus towards some 
desirable end. 

There is no real solution of the sanitation problem or 
the food-supply problem till we devise good systems of 
sewage-farming and of earth-to-earth burial. I am glad 

32 



Economy of Force 3 3 

to take this opportunity of stating my conviction that 
cremation and burying under stone are polar mistakes. 
Cremation may be necessary in cases of zymotic disease 
until we have devised something better. But I feel 
convinced that the scientific solution is that every carcase 
of man and beast shall be buried underground and a 
fruit-tree planted over it. The superstition against 
eating fruit grown on the dead bodies of one's friends 
is a good specimen of the wasteful and distracting kind 
of idolatry which keeps the world in bondage. What 
are fruit-trees for, if not to forge and transform cannibal- 
istic selfishness into sacramental joy? While we eat 
meat, we are obliged to cut the lives of creatures short, 
because those which die a natural death are unsuitable 
for food. But fruit lives on that which has died at its 
own time. 



CHAPTER IV 

DESTRUCTIVE MANIA 

We are going to think to-day about a Passion which is 
neither innocent nor quiet. It is known by many 
names. It occurs in nearly all small children, and is 
then called "love of mischief." In boys between the 
ages of seven and twelve it is called either " cruelty and 
spite " or " fine manly spirit," according to the religious 
and moral point of view of the speaker. 

In quite commonplace persons it begins at about 
twelve years old to die down or be absorbed, recurring 
afterwards only in occasional gentle oscillations. When 
one of these mild fits comes on, the individual, if wealthy, 
takes a few days or weeks of shooting at birds or 
beasts reared on purpose. If poor, he flings stones at 
sparrows, or goes rat-hunting ; or teases his mother or 
sister; or punches the head of his little brother. But 
in individuals who are more " out of the common " the 
dip of the stick is deeper and more serious. 

If one of these larger oscillations seizes a Malay, he 
is said to " run amok " and is hanged by the English. 
In a regiment of English soldiers, it is called " martial 
ardour," and rewarded with medals and public receptions. 
If it seizes a wealthy Englishman, he provides himself 
with elaborate killing apparatus and goes off to shoot 

34 



Destructive Mania 35 

big game, and is called an " adventurous spirit." If it 
seizes a band of hobbledehoys of the so-called " working 
class," they come in collision with the police and the 
orderliness of the town, and are called hooligans. If 
it comes with special violence to an adult, he makes a 
murderous assault on somebody, and the passion is 
described in the newspapers either as vile and brutal 
violence, or as homicidal mania, according to the taste 
and fancy of the doctors who give evidence at his trial. 
In the former case he is hanged ; in the latter he is 
confined at Broadmoor " during his Majesty's pleasure." 
And there, to all outward seeming, is an end of his 
influence on society. 

(You and I, friends, know very well that there is not 
an end of his influence. What is the good of pretending 
to believe that which we know is not true ? You in the 
condemned cell know very well that the world will 
be, in some respects, different hereafter, according to 
whether you do or do not pull yourself together and 
think clearly during the few days you still have to live 
on earth.) 

All the above-mentioned names denote conditions 
not indeed exactly similar. They differ as the same note 
differs when played on violin, pianoforte, trumpet or 
flute. The differences are due to overtones, or colour- 
tones. The relation between them concerns those whose 
business it is to orchestrate, or organise, that complex 
symphony known as human society. Let us hope they 
understand the delicate intricacies of their work. For 
us, the business on hand is simpler ; we have to find out 
what our note itself is by the help of a simple tuning- 
fork. 



36 The Forging of Passion into Power 

What is the impulse to kill, to hurt, to destroy ? 

For countless generations the existence of any tribe 
depended on all the male members of it (at least) hunting 
habitually. To kill was the primary duty ; the penalty 
for neglecting it was : — starvation for oneself and one's 
wife and children, as well as more or less of injury to 
one's tribe. 

Try to make a mind-picture of this state of things. 
One's livelihood depended on being able to kill, and 
skilful at killing. The man who disliked that business 
was an object of contempt. He who was slack or 
indifferent about it was an idler, a fool. All respectabil- 
ity, fame, honour and glory centred round extra clever- 
ness in, and love of, killing creatures. 

Just think of it ! The man who could see a rabbit or 
pheasant without trying to kill it took the same rank 
in the estimation of his neighbours as does now the 
vagabond loafer who leaves his family to starve or be 
supported by the parish. 

Then there arose quarrels between different tribes of 
men. The safety of one's wife and children, as well as 
one's duty to one's tribe, depended on one's being 
skilful in killing, and willing to kill, men. The man 
who could see a member of an alien tribe without 
trying to hurt him was regarded as we now regard the 
mother who is slack in ridding her children of vermin, 
or in disinfecting after an invasion of fever-microbes. 

There were, in those days, neither butchers nor stand- 
ing army; to kill was the duty of every male, and of 
many females as well, for countless generations. 

And we have to remember that the finer and more 
perfect the specimen, whether of rival or of prey, the 



Destructive Mania 37 

more emphatically it became the duty of the good man 
to exterminate it. Traces of this principle linger here 
and there in various strange little freaks of sensuous 
pleasure which students of sensation have noticed. We 
all do homage to it when we try and make our dinner 
tables " look attractive." We profess to be shocked at 
the ruffian who is prompted by the beauty of a picture 
to poke his stick through the canvas ; but we all expect 
our lady guests to be stimulated by the beauty of our 
peach to stick teeth into it, by the decorative skill of our 
cook to demolish her works of art. This is the mild 
form, suited to our present state of civilisation, of the 
impulse which makes a certain kind of person poke holes 
in pictures, scribble in valuable books in public libraries, 
and chip bits off beautiful statues and historic buildings. 

What we have to do is to register and fix in our minds 
the idea that every time the mistress of a house sanctions 
her table and the food on it being made to look beauti- 
ful, she is recognising in her family and guests the 
existence of that same instinct which, in some of its 
manifestations, we call ruffianly brutality ; the instinct, 
namely, which causes the presence of what we feel to be 
beautiful, i.e. the finished product of nature's evolution 
or man's toil, to act as a stimulus to the desire to crush 
and to destroy. In the case of the peach, the ancient 
instinct necessary for the self-preservation of the tribe 
has been transmuted into an artistic refinement which 
tends towards the higher education of the race ; in the 
case of the iconoclast, into a form unsuited to the present 
conditions of society, and antagonistic to its higher 
evolution. 

Time has gone on and things have changed. It is no 



38 The Forging of Passion into Power 

longer everyone's duty to kill. And the consciousness 
of some people floats on that surface which we call the 
Present, or only slightly wabbles away from that surface. 
They know nothing of the Past except from reading 
books — books mostly written at the present time, imbued 
with the feeling of the Present. Or if the book is old 
these people do not understand it, for their own conscious- 
ness supplies no clue to its meaning. 

But there are some whose very flesh, their muscles, 
nerves, brain-tissue, are saturated with the instinct of 
fidelity to the Past. They understand ! 

We have one instance of this fleshly fidelity to the 
Past in the existence of what are called dowsers. For 
many generations, there being no books, all scientific 
principles were taught by object-lessons. A large 
number of these lessons were connected with rituals 
carried on by means of freshly-cut branches or wands, 
which were moved about in various positions. A main 
subject of science, a main motive for study, were supplied 
by the need for finding water or metallic ores. Most 
things in Nature give off some effluvium or force peculiar 
to themselves ; and these forces affect us, often without 
our knowing it. And there are still people, sometimes 
whole families, whose arms begin to tingle when they 
touch fresh-cut branches of certain trees; and whose 
fingers twitch if, while holding the branch, they pass 
over water or a vein of metal. The dowser is one in 
whom fidelity to what was the sacred duty of his 
ancestors is embedded in nerve and muscle; he has a 
fleshly lust to repeat their ceremony. The word " lust," 
we must remember, means " list," desire^ impulse. When- 
ever we wish to do anything, not for any reason, but 



Destructive Mania 39 

only because we " like " to do it, find it agreeable, we 
are gratifying a lust. If our nerves and muscles desire 
to do the thing, it is a fleshly lust. Much confusion has 
been caused by using the words " fleshly lust " only in a 
bad sense. The dowser has a fleshly lust to twitch his 
stick when he passes over water. At the touch of the 
water's subtle effluvium the sensation end of his conscious- 
ness takes a plunge back into the Past. When I touch 
a dowsing rod my consciousness takes a plunge into the 
Past. I have never tried to find water; but I feel the 
tingle in my arms ; and the stick has often helped me 
to see ancient mathematicians and other wizards at their 
work. Much of the best of my published work on 
mathematical teaching has been done by the " accidental " 
stimulus of touching a divining or dowsing rod. 

I have had homicidal impulse at the touch of other 
stimuli. When I was quite young, I used to speculate 
on the problem why I did not try to kill someone who 
worried me. It was not love of my parents that 
hindered me ; in those moods I was incapable of love. 
It was not fear of consequences ; in those moods I was 
incapable of fear. It was not regard for God ; I con- 
sidered that God made me as I was and could not 
reasonably be angry with anything I did. It was — I 
always came back to the same conclusion — it was that 
I thought that if I killed anyone the police or the hang- 
man or someone would stop my working for algebra. 
Besides, I felt that all stormy passions in themselves 
interfered between me and algebra. Hate and revenge- 
fulness, as well as love and fear, vanished, like burned 
paper, when they threatened to interfere between me 
and algebra. 



4° The Forging of Passion into Power 

That means, as I now know, that some wizard ancestor 
of mine had stronger hold on my brain-tissue than the 
ancestors whose business was killing people. 

You, my friend in the condemned cell, were in 
different case from me; perhaps you had no mathe- 
matical ancestor ; or, if you had, his hold on you was 
weak. 

But surely there is no crime and no disgrace in 
having had a preponderance of ancestors who did their 
duty in protecting and feeding their families instead of 
mooning over pencils and compasses. 

What, then, was your crime ? That no one showed 
you how to forge your Passion of ancestral impulse into 
Power to do something useful for the Present or the 
Future. No one showed you how. But that negative 
fact is the crime of collective Humanity, not that of any 
individual. You and I will do our best to redeem it, by 
showing someone else how. 

Eugene Sue has done something in that direction, by 
asserting that the man who has fits of "homicidal 
mania " (i.e. impulse to kill folks) ought to be trained 
as a butcher. 

Feather-headed people who look only on the surface of 
things will say that butchers who like to kill must be 
brutes. People who do what they like, when they like, 
as they like, and only because they like, do, it is true, 
become not really honest brutes, but something which it 
is an insult to a decent wild beast to compare it with. 
But those who are trained to do only what they dislike 
become machines. Those who are trained to do what 
they like, when they ought, and because they ought, 
become artists. The man who dislikes killing things, 



Destructive Mania 4 1 

if he becomes a butcher for convenience, or from a 
mistaken sense of duty, thinks as little as may be of his 
trade ; works carelessly ; perhaps drowns thought in 
drink or dissipation ; kills badly ; inflicts suffering. But 
the man who loves to kill owing to latent ancestral 
passion for serving the community by killing can be 
trained to fix his whole mind on the business of killing 
in the manner which the best sense of the community 
decrees to be the best. 

Eugene Sue's suggestion, therefore, is not quite as wild 
as it seems to some people. 

It will be well, just here, to shut your eyes and 
meditate for a few moments on the floating stick. 

Crooked or broken sticks can dip one end down into 
the Past, while the other floats in the Present. Or both 
ends may hang down into the Past. But a straight, 
firm stick cannot dip one end into the Past without the 
other rising into the Future. And its rise into the 
Future will be exactly proportional to its dip into the 
Past. 

What does this prove ? Nothing, I repeat ; nothing. 
I am not proving theories, but furnishing your imagina- 
tion with instruments for the organising of thought 
material. 



CHAPTER V 

SUICIDAL MANIA 

In the north of Europe and of Asia (and probably also 
in other parts of the world) there used to prevail an idea 
that it was cowardly and selfish to lay on one's tribe the 
burden of one's support after one could no longer serve 
it by hunting or in war. Everyone who survived till 
old age was bound to kill himself or be put to death by 
his friends. The imagination of all young persons, for 
many generations, was filled with the idea of suicide 
as both a duty and an inevitable fate. What wonder, 
then, that in some families a sudden fit of rever- 
sion to ancestral type produces an impulse towards 
suicide? 

It was also desirable to prevent the tribe from being 
burdened with the weakly. Infanticide (as a preferable 
alternative to the desertion and exposure of the weakly 
young) thus became the duty of many parents ; of many 
for whom, owing to the strength of their parental 
affection, infanticide partook far more of the character 
of a higher kind of suicide than of anything which can 
legitimately be called homicide. The killing of a weakly 
child is now a crime. The impulse towards killing a 
beloved infant is (rightly) now considered a symptom of 

in-sanity, i.e. a not healthy form of reversion ; not 

42 



Suicidal Mania 43 

rational action, but the " fleshly lust " (reversion to former 
duty). 

The force stored up in ancestral infanticidal impulse 
needs guiding towards present uses. 

The guiding of it has been made difficult, owing to 
the fact that popular feeling in the matter has been 
distorted by ministers of varying religions : distorted, 
indeed, in three ways. When the community requires 
from the individual any painful sacrifice, the feelings of 
the person called on to make it are soothed and narcot- 
ised by an appeal to the religious emotions. Cutting 
one's own throat because one is old is called "cutting 
Runes to Odin " ; infanticide is called " giving one's baby 
back to the tribal god." This, of itself, while consoling 
to the immediate sufferer, tends to deepen the tendency 
to repeat the same action. But, besides this, priests, 
from a spirit of routine, continue to claim the accustomed 
sacrifice to the gods, after the well-being of the tribe no 
longer requires it ; this, by unnecessarily prolonging the 
custom, gives to the atavistic impulse an extra strong 
hold on posterity. 

At last, the incongruity between the conscience of the 
tribe and the priestly code of ethics becomes too glaring 
to be any longer tolerated ; the strain reaches a breaking 
point ; a revolution or movement of reform takes 
place, and a fresh set of priests are appointed, willing 
to preach, as duty to the gods, whatever customs suit 
the present condition of the tribal conscience. But these 
new priests are not content to enjoin the new code of 
duty, and explain that the old is now out of date ; they 
talk of the former duties as "sins," and treat the 
"fleshly" impulse to revert to those duties as a proof of 



44 The Forging of Passion into Power 

man's " fallen " and " corrupt " nature. They even go the 
length of asserting that the gods who enjoined the 
sacrifice when it was a real tribal duty necessary for the 
very existence of the community were not true gods 
but " devils." They thus blur the lines of historic feeling 
and confuse the consciousness of the new generation, 
making physical fidelity to ancestral type a disgrace 
instead of a glory. 

It is a matter of historic fact that, though martyrdom 
and the fact of being for a time despised and rejected 
may ennoble an individual, yet whatever is chronically 
thrust into darkness tends to take on de-graded and 
distorted forms. If the atavistic consciousness is habit- 
ually despised it becomes degraded ; distorted conscious- 
ness involves distorted nerve and brain conditions, and 
converts what was a mere harmless reposeful plunge 
into the Past into some non-natural and possibly novel 
mode of truly vicious action. All real vices and non- 
natural lusts are generated by this moral perversion. 
Honour thine Ancestral Past that thine own days may 
be long and healthy. Instead of despising our ancestral 
modes of life, we should revert to them, whenever 
possible, in all ways not harmful in the Present. Do 
not children stand the strain of the modern school-life 
all the better for spending vacations camping out of 
doors, picnicking in woods, and climbing trees, like their 
savage ancestors ? 

The first step towards the eradication from our people 
of the suicidal and infanticidal manias should be the 
instituting of religious services in honour of those who, 
in the past, killed themselves or their offspring for the 
good of the tribe. This would serve to arrest the 



Suicidal Mania 45 

tendency to act on mere nervous impulse, because it 
would deepen the sense that one's life and those of one's 
children are not one's own, to deal with according to 
one's fleshly impulses, but the property of the com- 
munity, to be held in trust for it, and disposed of only 
in accordance with its real needs. 



CHAPTER VI 

MORALITY AND ART 

James Hinton gave the title " The Art of Thinking " to 

one of his essays. The words were chosen deliberately 

and with the intention of their being taken in the full 

sense of their literal meaning, the artistic use of 

thought. To arrive at a full sense of what this implies, 

we must come to an understanding as to what is meant 

by the word Art. 

The cultivation of any physical sense passes through 

three principal stages or modes of use. There is, first, 

discrimination evoked in response to some necessity for 

self-protection. A keen power of discriminating among 

colours, or shapes, or sounds, helps an animal or a savage 

man in finding his prey, or in escaping his foes. But 

when a discrimination sense has reached a certain pitch 

of congenital power, the mere exercise of it begins to be 

in itself a pleasure, and almost a necessity of health. 

The infant delights in mere noise, in the mere exercise 

of its faculty of distinguishing one sound from another. 

So it is with shapes and colours ; the mere exercise of 

the sense faculty is a delight, quite apart from any 

question of safety or advantage to be gained by skill. 

Absence of things to look at is an actual privation. 

4 6 



Morality and Art 47 

Finally, it begins to be perceived that certain combina- 
tions of colour or form or sound are more pleasing to 
the sense than others. When this point is reached, art 
is born. 

Two conditions must exist before a mode of training 
has a right to call itself art-training. The first is that 
it shall cultivate the power of combining impressions 
received as separate. Art-training must, it is true, 
cultivate the power of discrimination also, and to a very 
high degree ; but the discrimination must ultimately 
serve the purpose of combination, or there is no art. 
An insect might feel the note D flat beautiful, because 
that is the pitch of its mate's voice, and, when the scale 
is played on a violin, may discriminate very keenly 
between D flat, the beautiful, and D natural, hideous to 
its instincts because sung by the bird which devours its 
tribe ; but this is not art. The musician also dis- 
criminates between D natural and D flat, but he knows 
nothing of one of these being preferable to another ; his 
business with each of them, in his capacity of sound- 
artist, is to judge under what conditions they shall be 
combined (either in a chord or in sequence) with each 
other and with other notes. The tester, who detects the 
presence of foul gas in a tin of preserved meat by a 
slight tap on the cover, must have his power of auditory 
distinction cultivated to a high pitch, but he selects the 
one sound as " good " and the other as " evil " ; in this 
there is no attempt at combination, therefore no art. 

The second condition which characterises art-training 
proper is that each combination shall be made in obedi- 
ence to the dictates of the art-instinct itself, unwarped 
by any other considerations. This point needs a little 



48 The Forging of Passion into Power 

clearing up. The amount and kind of elements among 
which combinations are to be effected may be limited to 
any degree, by all sorts of considerations, beforehand ; 
but, the limits once decided on, the act of choice, within 
those limits, must be pure and undisturbed, or it is not 
an act of art. The workman who goes with fivepence 
to a village shop where there are two tins of Aspinall's 
enamel, and who chooses the green rather than the blue 
to make a pattern on his red door, because he likes it 
better, does an act of art ; within narrow restrictions, 
but still, art. Nay, the man who, having no money to 
spare, finds a half-empty tin of enamel thrown away, 
and brings it home, and decides either to put a rim of 
the green paint on his door because " it do zim to I as it 
'ud look purty," or to leave the door plain because 
" when I did zee that there green atween the door and 
the ivy, I didn't zim to fancy it," has, in either case, 
done an act of art ; he has selected, among his limited 
stock of possibilities, a certain combination rather than 
another, because the one suited his art-sense (at its 
present level of culture) better than the other. But the 
person who, with boundless resources at command, is 
swayed, at the moment of choice, by any other con- 
sideration than " it do zim to I," is not doing an art-act. 
All this has nothing to do with any question of selfish- 
ness or the reverse. The man may be ornamenting the 
cottage for his own pleasure only, or for that of the wife 
with whom he hopes to enjoy it, or as a parting gift to 
his sister before he leaves home never to return. The 
point is this : — Whatever be his motive for decorating, 
if he selects his decoration as the actual shades strike his 
eye when seen in combination, he is exercising his art- 



Morality and Art 49 

faculty ; whereas no choice of colour is an exercise of 
colour-art if it be swayed by any other considerations 
than the laws of the eye itself. And it matters little 
whether the motive be : " I'll wear a green ribbon 
because green is the patriotic colour just now," or " This 
combination is considered correct just now," or "The 
Duchess of Somewhere wore this at the last Court ball " ; 
in either case some consideration other than the pleasure 
of the chooser's eye determines the choice ; and therefore 
there is (so far as the eye is concerned) no art. Art- 
faculty exerts itself in subjection to no laws except 
those of the choosing organ, whatever that may be. 

The organ develops first as a mere discriminating 
organ, under pressure of the action of other organisms. 
But when fully established as a discriminating organ, 
it then sets up its own code of laws. When an organ 
selects and combines in obedience to its own laws only, 
we call its action " art." When such writers as Ruskin 
and Hobson make their passionate claim for some 
opportunity for art-culture on behalf of the masses, what 
they primarily mean is that there should be no class of 
the community living under such conditions that each 
organ and faculty is exerted only according to laws 
belonging to some other department of life; there 
should come into the life of every citizen opportunities for 
exercising his faculties, each according to its own laws. 

The horror of association felt by a weak tribe for the 
war-paint or war-cry of a fiercer neighbour tribe, the 
disgusted contempt of a dominant caste for the colour 
of the pariah's badge — these are factors in evoking the 
keen discrimination which is the first essential of art- 
culture. But when once the artist has come, we must 

4 



5° The Forging of Passion into Power 

expect from him no deference to prejudices of associ- 
ation ; he has one function only in connection with the 
hateful tint or note, viz., to combine it with other tints 
or notes in such a manner as to cause men to realise 
that it adds to the beauty of the whole. This point we 
must remember if we are to attach any adequate mean- 
ing to the expression " Art of Thinking." The Art of 
Thinking is that mode of dealing with thoughts which 
is related to our mental faculties of discrimination as 
the form and colour arts are to our powers of form and 
colour discrimination, as the art of musical composition 
is to the faculty of distinguishing between different 
notes. It is the art of combining thoughts, not in sub- 
servience to any external need or law, but in accordance 
with the laws of the Thinking-organ itself. 

The Science which underlies the Art of Thought-com- 
bination is called Mathematics. Mathematics stands 
related to the Art of Thinking somewhat as the science 
of harmony and counterpoint does to the art of music. 

It so happens that the laws of thought-combination 
were first discovered when men were trying to think 
truly about number, quantity, and size ; and for that 
reason a great many persons assert that mathematics is 
the science of number, size, and quantity. This assertion 
is pure nonsense. 

Persons who have outgrown the delusion about 
mathematics being the science of number and size, speak 
of it as a sort of " Logic." This is a little nearer the 
mark, but only a little. Logic can become mathematical, 
and, as Gratry said, when it does so it acquires wings, 
whereas before it had only feet. 

It seems to me a pity that children should, in most 



Morality and Art 5 J 

cases, know nothing of mathematics except as related 
to ideas of number and size. Any parents who may 
wish to do so can make, of such arithmetic, algebra, and 
geometry as are taught in schools, a genuine introduction 
to the Art of Thinking. This can be done without adding 
to the child's intellectual labour, by occasional little half- 
jesting remarks at home. 1 

We cannot evolve any art of combinations, harmonies, 
and sequences, till we are provided with a multiform, 
strong, and accurate sense of discrimination between the 
elements to be combined. Nature's way of providing 
us with the necessary discrimination is first to make 
personal or tribal safety depend on that discrimination, 
on seeking one thing and avoiding its opposite; next, 
to set up an hereditary instinct to feel as " good " that 
which our ancestors found by experience to be good, and 
as " evil " what experience taught them to avoid. The 
instinct to avoid certain things because they are " evil " 
is the necessary preliminary to any development of art. 

But the Art-Creator, when he appears on the scene, 
begins by sweeping the verdicts of experience and of 
instinct into the limbo of forgotten superstitions, not 
because art is lawless, but because it has laws of its own, 
and tolerates no other legislator. Till it may be master 
of the situation, it (art) stays away. 

Now we are going to fit our House of Thought with 
a new implement of orderliness. 

The leaders of a tribe have been trying their consci- 
entious best, for countless generations, to foster in the 
young a habit, an instinct, when they hear a certain 

1 My text-book, Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, contains a 
suggestion of such domestic jokes. 



52 The Forging of Passion into Power 

note, to scamper instantly towards it because it is the 
cry of some animal which ought to be caught for food, 
and, when they hear a certain other note, to scuttle 
away and hide, because it is the cry of some beast of 
prey too powerful for them to cope with. 

A Jubal appears among the tribe, an inventor of 
music ; he has got hold of some sort of gut or fibre 
which will twang a variety of notes. The children stand 
round him, inquisitive, wondering, half- frightened yet 
spell-bound. What is he doing? Demoralising them. 
Blurring the lines of distinction between " good and evil." 
Destroying, bringing to naught, the work of ages. 

Can you conceive the wrath of the Leaders ? 

Yet thus, and thus alone, can any art be born into 
the world ; at that cost, and no lesser one, does art exist. 

And observe that the precursor of music is not even 
making music ; he is only making senseless noise. He 
is sweeping away the laws of tribal ethics; and he is 
not keeping even those of counterpoint, for they are 
not yet evolved. 

Between the Law-Abiders and the Art-Creator there 
must always come " The Law-Breaker." If the note of 
the awful beast of prey is ever beautiful, it is so, even on 
art's own showing, only when put in certain specifically 
right relations to other sounds ; and the criminal lunatic 
Jubal is not putting it in right relations at all ; he is 
no good anyway ; Anathema ; away with him ; crucify 
him ! 

And indeed, though art cannot be born unless some- 
one has courage to break the laws of tribal self-pre- 
servation, neither can music be born in a chaotic 
confusion of disorderly noises. It will not do for 



Morality and Art 53 

everyone to twang guts and ignore tribal duty. The 
Law-breaker, therefore, must not demoralise the tribe ; 
until at least he knows how to teach them a higher 
Law. He must be isolated from his kind; he will be 
during his earth -life The Misunderstood One; the 
Eternal Scape-goat, who bears the sins of the world ; 
"outside the camp, though inside the veil." If he is 
the true destined Revealer he will not think the price 
too high to pay for this privilege. If he is not that, 
then isolation is the best thing for him ; it gives him 
the opportunity to meditate on the folly of meddling 
in dangerous experiments without sufficient warrant 
or preparation. 

Latent heat and potential light are stored up during 
the composition of a body ; sensible heat and visible 
light are given off during decomposition. 

True economy consists in not disturbing the storage, 
except under conditions which facilitate the force given 
off in decomposition passing into the composition of 
a body of higher evolution. 

But there are people who think that it is always a 
good thing to set light free, regardless of the question 
whether anything of higher evolution than the candle 
will profit by it ; and there are people who think that 
it is always economical to abstain from lighting a candle, 
no matter who, and what, needs the light. 

The Bases of Morality for the Law-Breaker 

The game of skittles is more interesting when played 
with a trained hand and eye than when played at 
random. 



54 The Forging of Passion into Power 

If life is to be all beer and skittles it is advisable 
not to put the beer-bottles among the skittles, at least 
until after we have drunk the beer. 

Only a cockney cares for shooting barn-door fowls. 

Only a cad poaches on his neighbour's preserves as 
long as he has woods of his own. (The excuse for 
the village poacher is that society has robbed him of 
his woods.) 

The true gentleman likes shooting dangerous wild 
beasts better than shooting pheasants, even if they are 
his own. 

Ethics is a fence put up to protect our neighbour's 
barnyard. 



CHAPTER VII 

SEX INSTINCTS 

From the dawn of organic life on this planet up to the 
appearance of civilised man, every race of organisms was 
forced to provide food for creatures not of the same race. 
Each race was therefore bound, under penalty of extinc- 
tion, to propagate in great excess of the amount required 
to maintain its own numbers. 

Pause for a moment and think. For countless ages, 
the whole evolution of everything depended upon every- 
body putting into the world a thousand times as many 
fertilised eggs as ever were intended to come to maturity. 
Everyone's duty was to give to some other race, as food, 
a thousand eggs or babies for one that was to be reared. 
Slowly, very slowly, there has crept in an idea, im- 
perfectly carried out even yet, of protecting the young, 
of not allowing other races to feed on one's babies. 
Man has cleared off, at least from all the main centres 
of civilisation, all of the larger races (lions, tigers, wolves, 
etc.) which show any desire to eat the flesh of human 
babies; but we have not even yet accomplished the 
extinction of the parasites and microbes who devour 
human flesh. So that even still over- propagation 
is to some slight extent the duty of some people. 
That is to say, propagation somewhat in excess 

55 



56 The Forging of Passion into Power 

of what would be normal if everyone lived to die of 
old age. 

For all our ancestors, from the first organic creature 
up to a few generations ago, an amount of propagating 
activity which would necessarily be highly inconvenient 
at the present time was a solemn duty. I am using the 
words " solemn " and " duty " advisedly. Duty is that 
which is due, and everything is solemn which tends 
towards the organising of a higher organism. It does 
not follow that the individual felt solemn or was conscious 
of his duties. For all practical and psychological 
purposes an enormous amount of over-propagation was 
a solemn duty to our ancestors. It is so to rabbits and 
wild birds still. For us it is no longer a duty. But the 
impulse remains in the shape of a fleshly lust. What 
are we going to do with it ? 

The first thing to do with it is to treat it always in 
thought and word with the utmost reverence which it 
is in our nature to feel for anything. 

What have we done with it ? 

We have made of it the subject of irreverent jesting 
and of far more irreverent moralising. 

Can one conceive of anything more hideously and 
grotesquely irreverent than the attitude of a priest who 
celebrates the Eucharist after prefacing it by a sermon 
in which he denounces, as the inspiration of the devil, 
that very condition in man to which, as it exists in the 
wheat and vine plants, he owes the possibility of having 
his bread and wine to consecrate ? 

Normal sex-action is fertile contact between suitably 
differentiated polars. This may take place either in the 
generative organs or in the brain. 



Sex Instincts 57 

When we sing the invocation "Veni, Creator," we 
invite Adonai' to make fertile this contact of polars. 
When this happens in the organs of generation we call 
it fecundation ; when it happens in the brain we call it 
inspiration (artistic, poetic, prophetic, or spiritual 
inspiration, as the case may be). 

The problem with which Humanity is confronted is 
that of diverting the atavistic excess of desire for con- 
tact of polars from the physically fertilisable organs to 
that spiritually fertilisable organ which we call " brain," 
and so to increase the genius of the race while keeping 
its numbers down to manageable proportions. The 
difficulty of the problem has been enormously complicated 
by the action of moralists. 

Nowhere is the action of moralists in increasing 
immorality so clearly to be seen as in connection with 
the sex impulse ; and it is therefore in this chapter that 
I propose to describe it. 

Probably no human being, possibly no mammal or 
bird, has ever experienced sex-action for the first time 
without at least a momentary impression of the Presence 
of something so sacred that all else which is held sacred 
is to this new impression as shadow is to substance. If 
this momentary Revelation of Sacredness comes to a 
virgin mind cumbered with no previous ideas, it runs 
smoothly along the course of its normal evolution to its 
normal goal : — a quickening of the power of sympathy 
and a development of the power of altruism. The 
individual is then free to decide whether, when, and 
under what conditions, he shall repeat the act, according 
to his circumstances and to such knowledge as he 
possesses, guided by the additional sympathy and 



58 The Forging of Passion into Power 

altruism left behind by the act itself. He will take his 
own liking only as one of many factors which have to be 
taken into account in deciding his course of action : — 
as we all do in the case of a liking for peaches, or a 
desire to enjoy music or pictures. 

But if the sudden sense of sacredness comes into con- 
flict with some preconceived idea of degradation, evil, or 
triviality, in the sexual act, the effect is somewhat like 
that of a collision between two trains running in opposite 
directions. Wreckage of something or other is certain 
to occur ; and the answer to the question what shall 
escape from that wreckage is a matter of what we call 
" accident," by which we mean that it depends on causes 
over which we have no control. 

Consciously or unconsciously, the man is confronted 
with the questions : — " If that was not sacred, then what 
else can be so? If that Presence was the devil, then 
what is the use of God ? " Even if his conscious thought 
does not ask those questions, his flesh and blood and 
marrow and unconscious mind ask them, and insist on 
their being answered. 

The following are some ot the answers given in the 
wreck of body and mind : — 

I. God is in Nature, and whatever is natural is holy. 
The individual seeks the opposite sex as freely as a wild 
animal does; forgetting that the proceedings of wild 
animals are consonant to the true order of Nature only 
where there is abundant room for healthy children to 
roam about in and plenty of carnivorous birds and 
beasts to rid society of sickly and superfluous ones. The 
original nerve-wreckage is helped into intellectual con- 
fusion by the double sense of the word " natural " ; it is 



Sex Instincts 59 

used sometimes as meaning that which we feel impelled 
to do because the doing of it was, for our ancestors, con- 
sonant to the true order of evolution at their level of 
progress, sometimes as meaning consonant to the true 
order of evolution for our stage of progress. People 
mistakenly suppose that what is natural in the former 
sense is necessarily so in the latter. 

2. Some persons "return to nature" in a different way 
from that just described. They deliberately turn their 
backs on temptation, live in the country and almost 
in isolation ; tire themselves with manual labour ; adopt 
a poor diet; and avoid the society of the opposite sex, 
and everything which can stimulate receptivity to Adonai', 
the fertiliser at either pole of their nerve- battery. They 
think that they " find God in Nature," because they use 
their senses on observing His work outside of themselves. 
They watch the effect of fertilisation on non-human 
creatures, as a substitute for becoming fertile themselves. 

3. Some come to the conclusion that there is neither 
God nor devil ; nor anything but illusion. They 
cynically decide to make a constant amusement of the 
sensations which indicate the touch of that Adonai- 
Adonis, whom all normal instinct hails as God, but 
whom moralists proclaim to be the devil. 

4. Sometimes the bewildered conscience fluctuates 
backwards and forwards, alternately yielding to the 
overwhelming inspiration of the "Adonai'," and then 
calling Him " devil " in a fit of " repentance." 

5. Sometimes the individual gives up the attempt to 
find his way himself amid the illogical tangle, and hands 
over the business of guiding him to some priest, pastor, 
moralist, or "Salvationist," not unfrequently the very 



60 The Forging of Passion into Power 

same who originally did the mischief. This, of course, 
is the consummation most desired by the moralising 
gentry, who take occasion to magnify their office. 

6. Sometimes the very physical nervous structure 
of the man, or of his posterity, is wrecked, and sets 
up for itself a variety of anomalous sensations, desires, 
and lusts, such as no wild beast could conceive the 
nature of. Whereupon moralists take the opportunity 
to point a moral about the fallen and corrupt nature 
of man. Now, whoever else may have the right to 
indulge in lamentations about the fallen and corrupt 
nature of a wrecked railway train, it is evident that 
those who put in its way the obstacle which caused 
the disaster can have no such right. Moralists and 
teachers of religion have not sufficiently taken to heart 
the great truth that whatever organ of the body is 
thought of while the religious emotions are active 
tends to become turgid and excitable. They seize 
upon children at the critical age, and preach sexual 
abstinence as a religious duty; with the inevitable 
consequence of making it, in many cases, an over- 
whelmingly difficult one. They should leave that 
topic entirely in the hands of unemotional medical 
advisers, and reserve religious emotion — if they must 
stir it at all — as a stimulus for the faculties which it is 
desirable to stimulate into action. 1 No such thing as 

1 The above applies to religious emotions^ such as are roused by 
thinking about the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, the sorrows 
of the Madonna, and the ecstatic utterances of saints. All such 
topics may seem to give self-control for a time, but are prone to 
leave dangerous reactions unless the force generated is immediately 
carried off in some active work. They are therefore most safely 
employed as stimulus to beneficence and the doing of duties. The 



Sex Instincts 6 1 

a sound system of education can be evolved till it is 
accepted that receptivity of Adonai' the Fertiliser is 
the inalienable birthright of all creatures ; it is the 
glory and privilege of Man to direct, at any given 
time, at which pole of his nerve-battery Adonai shall 
descend. 

Ants and bees have contrived a scheme of morality 
in which large numbers of the community are kept 
physically infertile, apparently without evolving any 
compensating receptivity for fresh intellectual inspira- 
tion. All the industry, the altruism, and the magnificent 
organisation of these highly civilised peoples have not 
prevented arrestation of development and of progress. 
Nor do they succeed in preventing us — barbarians as 
we are compared with them — from appropriating to 
our own use the results of the bees' toil, robbing ant 
nurseries to feed our tame fish, and scalding out the 
ants in millions whenever we find them inconvenient 
to ourselves. The message of these arrested civilisa- 
tions to ours is : — Beware of irreverence to Adonai the 
Fertiliser ; for He will not let them pass guiltless who 
slight Him or blaspheme His Holy Name. 

Now, young mother, I know what you want to ask. 
What are you to say to your boy "before he goes to 
school " ? It is not my business, as I remarked before, 
to form conclusions for you, or to dictate what you 
shall say or do ; I am trying to help you to learn the 
Art of Thinking for yourself. There are two or three 
obvious truths which it would be well to get soaked 
into your own mind before the child is old enough to 

same caution does not apply to calm religio-philosophical absorption 
in the thought of the Infinite Unseen. 



62 The Forging of Passion into Power 

talk, and two or three mental habits which he had 
better form before he goes out into the world of school. 

For yourself, take notice that the two more important 
faculties, that of thought and that of generation, are 
slowly passing through the same process of evolution 
which the faculties of sight and hearing have already 
passed through. Having been evolved, under pressure 
of the struggle for life, as implements of racial pre- 
servation, they are being gradually transformed into 
instruments of creative art and channels of spiritual 
inspiration. Read over again the last chapter and 
apply it to the art of generating progeny. Learn 
what you can about Nature's wide variety in the 
matter of marriage customs. 1 This will help you to 
clear your mind of insular and narrow ideas. 

For your child, accustom him, from infancy, to realise 
consciously the sacredness of order and sequence. 
Bring it home to his consciousness that people are 
not trusted to walk down stairs till they have shown 
that they can walk steadily on the floor; that one is 
not trusted to handle costly and delicate objects till 
one knows how to handle common ones carefully ; 
that one is not allowed to experiment with dangerous 
explosives or poisons till one has shown oneself capable 
of dealing properly with the more harmless kinds of 
chemicals. 

Let him see what an ugly, miserable thing is a flower 
whose protecting sheath has been torn away before the 
proper time. 

1 Grant Allen's Story of the Plants is a simple, cheap, useful 
little book, and contains a large quantity of information on the 
subject. 



Sex Instincts 63 

Accustom him to the idea that Church is a great 
Drama, in which all are actors and nobody a mere 
audience; and that the silence, solemnity, and orderliness 
enforced there are rehearsals intended to get people into 
the right habit and attitude in which to approach the 
really sacred facts of Life. 

Then " before he goes to school " tell him that the 
organs by means of which children are made are the 
most delicate and the most sacred things with which we 
have to do ; that he may ask you any questions he likes 
about them, and you will answer him if you can ; but 
that till he is quite grown up he must not experiment 
with them ; and had better not listen to the talk of 
children who know nothing of order and sequence. 

When he asks questions, answer him according to the 
best of your own judgment at the time. He is your 
child, not mine ; I cannot tell exactly what ought to 
be said to him. 

If you are under the delusion that you, or I, or any- 
one else knows now what opinions the best and purest 
people will be holding, or what line of action they will 
be taking, in sex matters, in twenty years from now, 
pray occupy some of your thinking-time in shaking 
yourself free from it. 

But if anything can be said to be clear and certain 
on the sex-question, it is that a person who is going to 
try extra-legal experiments should not entangle with 
his own life that of any woman who would not have 
associated herself with him had she known it, and 
especially he should not have children by such a woman. 
Therefore give your child the habit of understanding 
that a promise once made must be kept, even if the 



64 The Forging of Passion into Power 

keeping of it should prove more inconvenient than at 
first seemed likely; and that whoever is not prepared 
to keep a promise at all costs, should, at all costs, forego 
the convenience of making it. 

There are whispers in the air of a great discovery in 
America about sex-action, which seems likely to 
revolutionise all our ideas on the subject. It has always 
been known to occultists that each form of worship of 
the concrete, from the purest Christian ecstasy to the 
most degraded fetish-worships, has its exact analogue 
in some form of sex-action, passion, or emotion. But 
modern occultists knew of no sex-analogue to the calm, 
unemotional, passionless absorption of soul and mind in 
adoration of The Non-conceivable Unity, which is the 
secret of the force of Israel. This missing link has now 
been recovered : the lost secret, apparently, of the higher 
and purer Mysteries of Egypt and the East. No one 
can form any conception of how this discovery may 
influence our whole conceptions of sex morality. The 
best that any mother can do now is to pray and strive 
that her child may grow up worthy to take a manly 
part in the revolution which is obviously preparing. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PROTECTIVE INSTINCTS 

It must by this time be evident that there are many of 
us for whom moralists and teachers of religion can do 
little that is really valuable to help us to forge passion 
into power. The most they can do or are willing to do 
for those I am addressing is to provide crutches for 
individuals whose legs they have broken. 

And what about our advisers on the medical side ? 

The higher the grade of evolution of any creature, the 
greater the variety of dangers to which it is exposed. 
But also the greater the variety of its self-protecting 
instincts. Genius is exposed to many dangers from 
which the commonplace are free, but develops, when 
left to itself, instincts of self-protection which the common- 
place neither possess nor need. Now almost every 
instinct developed by genius, for its own moral pro- 
tection, is registered in medical books as a symptom of 
insanity. Consequently parents and teachers discourage 
young genius from guarding itself from deteriorating 
influences under the impression that the self-protecting 
precautions "look crazy." As James Hinton said, the 
reason the world is not saved is that the faculties which 
could save it are trampled, by the insincerity of our 
systems of education, into mad-houses, or gaols, or early 

6 5 5 



66 The Forging of Passion into Power 

graves, or worse. The insincerity is for the most part 
not conscious or voluntary on the part of teachers : it is 
mainly due to the fact that they assume it to be their 
duty to trample down and exterminate precisely those 
instincts which ought to be most carefully cultivated. 
Muddle is made, not so much by what we say, or what 
we do, or what we consciously think, as by what we take 
for granted. Teachers take for granted that they ought 
to eliminate everything which it pleases the medical 
profession to catalogue under the heading :— " Symptoms 
of insanity." Things will begin to clear up when it is 
recognised that many kinds of insanity are symptoms of 
the mistaken confidence of parents and teachers in the 
wisdom of the medical profession. Things are beginning 
to mend, however, since the admission of women to that 
profession ; women doctors started with a freer hand ; 
they do not feel bound by the conventions of mediaeval 
nonsense which have so long satisfied, and which now 
hamper, their brothers of the craft. But they can do 
little to help us unless we have courage to help ourselves 
and them. It is for us, the patients, " the dreamers, the 
derided, the mad, blind men who see" to take the matter 
into our own hands and decide that our instincts shall 
not be trampled into the mud by any theories of either 
doctors or priests. 

When I was Librarian at Queen's College, two girls, 
devoted friends and constant companions, were reckoned 
by the authorities as among the best moral influences 
of the place. They have turned out remarkable women, 
gifted with high and pure moral instincts. When they 
were aged respectively sixteen and seventeen, they con- 
sulted me in a difficulty. They had discovered that 



Protective Instincts 67 

when they were together their conversation fell to a 
lower moral level than either would have carried on with 
anyone else. They had resolved to take themselves in 
hand and not to indulge any more in the foolish gossip 
of which they were ashamed. But, finding themselves 
relapsing into it, they had determined not to talk to 
each other for the future except on necessary college 
business. So much they had settled by the light of their 
own instincts of purity, without the aid of any human 
advice. They now wanted me to advise them how to 
prevent it getting about college that they had quarrelled. 
In this particular case I was able to afford the necessary 
shelter to the dear children ; I invited them to read with 
me occasionally in my private apartment, and advised 
them to come up the main stairway on those occasions, 
together, in full view of other pupils. 

But this was an evasion of the real difficulty, accident- 
ally available in one particular case; not an actual 
moral solution. The real difficulty consists in the fact 
that persons possessing delicate instincts of moral self- 
protection cannot obey them, even in matters which 
concern only themselves and in ways which impose 
sacrifice only on themselves, without becoming the 
subjects of prurient curiosity to coarser natures. Parents 
and teachers too often discourage the sudden suspen- 
sion of a friendship on the ground that such rupture is 
" freaky " and " looks queer." The cessation of inter- 
course is therefore postponed till real damage has been 
done. The nerve-stamina gives way ; the moral nature 
deteriorates. Or perhaps the outraged instinct asserts 
itself in some violent and irrational manner, and there 
ensues a " quarrel " which appears to be about something 



68 The Forging of Passion into Power 

which is not the real cause of irritation, but only the 
excuse for the instinct to assert itself. It is driven to 
seek the excuse of a quarrel, because to avoid old 
friends without any such objective reason is held to be 
" a symptom of insanity." 

In a lunatic asylum where I studied, I met a lady 
who called herself Frances Obrenovitch. Her simple 
courage and power of moral logic have lighted up for 
me the whole inferno of insanity with a radiance like 
the smile of the Sun-god. But for the present we are 
talking of protective instincts, and what Frances showed 
me on that subject. Frances took it into her head that 
I could, and ought to, make a career for myself in 
literature ; and sometimes lectured me on my lack of 
ambition, which, she considered, was impeding my use- 
fulness. She was, morally, far saner than I was; I 
always listened with respect to her gentle sermonising. 
She was obviously unfit to take charge of her money 
matters ; but I felt a great desire to rescue her from 
incarceration, and proposed to try to get the Chancellor 
(she was a ward in Chancery and had no near relatives) 
to give the charge of her over to me. Frances took a 
" freak" or " mood," as it was called in the asylum, and 
abruptly cut my acquaintance. The patients began to 
comment on her bad treatment of me, who had been, 
as they said, so kind to her. The head attendant, 
seeing me watching her as she passed me in the corridors 
with a stony stare, kindly tried to apologise for Frances. 
" You must excuse her ; it is her affliction, poor thing," 
etc., etc. I could have shaken the good woman, amiable 
as was her intention. On the last day of my visit, I 
went to Frances's recess to try whether she would relent 



Protective Instincts 69 

at parting and bid me good-bye. " I have something 
to say to you," she began in a hard, high-pitched voice. 
"You could make a career for yourself in literature if 
you chose. Go and do it, and don't waste your time 
over lunatics. That is my advice to you and my wish ; 
but about that I can only advise. But what I have to 
say for myself is this: — If you will do as I advise, you 
may come and see me sometimes, and I will be proud 
of your friendship. But if you are going to waste your 
time over lunatics, I will be no party to it ; for in that 
case I will never speak to you again." 

Of course I promised to exert myself to do as she 
wished ; and the smile with which she rewarded me was 
enough to make one keep any promise. 

Her freak — of cutting her one sane friend, her one 
link with the outer world, her one possibility of emanci- 
pation from a life-long incarceration — was due to an 
impulse of moral self-protection ; she would not speak 
to me till she had fought out the battle with herself, and 
conquered the temptation to save herself at the cost of 
my career. 

Only once again did she take a "freak" of cutting 
me. She had by that time learned to trust me, and 
recovered herself sufficiently to come to an explanation 
in a very few hours. 

There is a peculiar smile, the token of victory over 
Unseen Forces of Evil, which in modern Europe is seen 
chiefly in mad-houses. I am very sure that in Palestine 
of old it was often seen in " Schools of the Prophets," 
and, in the time of religious persecution, in the dungeons 
of the Inquisition. And this brings me to a critical 
question. 



7° The Forging of Passion into Power 

In Asia of old, children of a certain type, children 
born under certain peculiar circumstances, were brought 
up in a temple, or religious school. We read of what 
such children said : — e.g., the infant Samuel. Hundreds 
of children say similar things in England now, say 
things quite as original-sounding and quite as beautiful. 
Most highly neurotic children are subject to thought- 
transference, and project into suggestive and often 
beautiful concrete forms the deepest thoughts of those 
under whose influence they live. The question we have 
to face is not, " How came children of old to say wise 
and beautiful things ? " but " How comes it that children 
who said them grew up into wise statesmen or holy 
Prophets ; while similar children now too often either 
make fiasco of their own lives, or degenerate into 
making a success of their own lives by wrecking other 
people's ? " 

In Schools of Prophets children were taught reverence 
for their own instincts, and the art of using them as 
moral self-protection. In modern European schools 
one of the chief duties of the teachers is to ensure that 
these instincts are trampled out of existence. 

The general reader (should he, by mistake, glance at 
these pages) will probably exclaim : " But one must 
make one's children grow up like other people, in good 
form, able to take their place in the world, and to pass 
without comment in general society." But then, as I 
said at starting, I am writing, not for the general reader 
but for those who seriously desire to forge passion into 
power ; to convert their own vague sense that things 
are not quite as they should be, into effective power to 
have them altered. In the same country where the 



Protective Instincts 7 1 

child Samuel grew up into a statesman, the Lord's 
people were forbidden to be like other people. They 
were not to be " conformed to the world," especially not 
to any sort of religious world ; each Prophet was to be 
guided not by the instincts of any other Prophet but by 
his own ; by the Revelation given to him personally from 
the Unseen. 

Where prophetic instinct is generally ignored, it seems 
almost like an affectation of superiority if one claims to 
have any. Where the Law is that each man should 
follow the guidance of his own instinct, the fact of 
following one's own implies nothing except a desire 
to obey the Law. Hence the severe denunciations of 
Prophets against those who follow fashions, even in 
matters indifferent. They are helping to bind them- 
selves and others in inextricable bondage to immoral 
influences. 



CHAPTER IX 

BALANCE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 

If you can procure a sheet of foolscap paper, lay it 
open before you. Write at the top of the left-hand page 
a big C; at top of the right-hand page a big D. 

Under C copy out the following table, with as wide 
a space between the numbers as the length of the page 
will allow for : — 



1. Physical digestive power; power to get force from 

eating visible things. 

2. The Time-Sense. 

3. Attention to the Concrete. 

4. Desire to enjoy. 

5. Delight in acquiring. 

6. Desire to real-ise one's own Ideal. 

7. Love of absorbing other organisms into oneself or 

one's own Ideals. 

8. Consciousness of one's relation to persons'visibly 

present (or whom one often sees, or constantly 
corresponds with). 

9. Power of external observation by sight, hearing, 

etc. 

10. Analysis. 

72 



Balance of the Nervous System 73 

11. Activity of outer senses. 

12. Power to impress others with one's own thoughts, 

feelings, etc. 

Under D write out this other table. Set each 
number on the same line as the corresponding number 
in Table C : — 

D 

1. Power to draw Force direct from the Unseen. 

2. Love of thinking of the Eternal. 

3. Attention to the Abstract. 

4. Pleasure in thinking of things enjoyed by others. 

5. Impulse to give. 

6. Joy in renunciation. 

7. Pleasure in being absorbed in other organisms or 

in serving the Ideals of others. 

8. Consciousness of one's relation to the dead, or the 

absent, or to future generations. 

9. Power of visualising, imagining sounds, etc. 

10. Synthesis. 

11. Activity of unconscious mind. 

12. Receptivity, sensitiveness to the thoughts and 

feelings of others. 

Pin the paper open on your wall, or set it up on your 
bureau, so that it may often be under your eyes. 
Learn the two columns by heart. 

If you are not so situated as to be able to adopt this 
course, learn the tables by heart from the book ; but 
take care to visualise as you do so. That is to say, 
have in your mind's eye, all the time, a picture of the 
sheet of foolscap as above described. Get your imagina- 



74 The Forging of Passion into Power 

tion into a condition in which you can, at any moment, 
call up a clear picture of the two tables with the corre- 
sponding items written opposite each other. Make sure 
that this is accomplished before you read any further. 

Now think of Table C (or rather, that which it 
represents) as laid in one pan of a pair of scales, and 
what Table D represents as laid in the other pan. Get 
this picture also well visualised. 

When I use the words " a balanced nervous system," 
I mean one in which the two pans stand level. 

This is no dogma imposed by authority. If you can 
doubt that the true equipoise of a nervous system consists 
in balance between the two sides of our table, pray do 
so. Doubt as hard as you can, and as long as you can ; 
any doubt that you may feel will be the starting-point of 
fresh thought-lines, and enable you to find out some 
truth unknown to me. 

By the time you have read to the end of this chapter, 
it may occur to you that you could draw up a better 
table of nerve-equipoise than mine. If it does, get a 
fresh sheet of foolscap, real or imaginary ; write out on 
it your own table ; learn that by heart, visualising as 
you go ; then read this chapter over again, substituting, 
as you go, your own table for mine. Your own mind, 
and therefore also the general world-mind, will be all 
the richer for your having done so. 

But because you disagree with an author, or doubt his 
knowing the whole of his subject, that is no reason why 
you should not try to understand his point of view, and 
to follow his reasoning as far as it goes. The principle 
of nerve-balance is the same, however much we may 
differ as to the details of adjustment. When I think of 



Balance of the Nervous System 75 

nerve-equipoise, I think of my own table; if you can 
make out one which seems to you more satisfactory, then, 
for the future, think of the subject in connection with 
your own table. 

The point on which we have to fix attention just now 
is this : — In what is called, when weak, a mediocre person, 
and, when strong, a good all-round sort of man, each 
number of one table is fairly balanced against the 
corresponding number in the other table ; whereas all 
that is known as genius, and all that is distinctive, 
picturesque, and striking in character, depend on the 
preponderance of some one or more characteristics, the 
unbalancement of the mind or nervous structure at one 
or more of the lines. Now the readers whom I am 
chiefly addressing have little belief in the possibility or 
desirability of turning out everybody conformed to the 
same well-regulated pattern. Still less do we ourselves 
at heart desire to be conformed to any general pattern ; 
however, in moods of despondency, we may lament some 
consequences of our ex-centricity. We know that 
genius, on the whole, rules the world, however many 
persons of genius may be crushed under the foot of the 
multitude. And some of us know, besides, that when 
genius does consent to sell its birthright for a mess of 
pottage, what it gets in return for the treasure it has 
sacrificed is not the good, wholesome family pea-soup 
which is so satisfying to the appetite of the mediocre, 
but a vile devil's-broth flavoured with all the fumes 
which emanate from the pit of hell. And this is 
only Nature's punishment for violating her laws. For 
in truth abnormality and ex-centricity are, as Charles 
Babbage showed, the most normal things in the world ; 



7 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 

they form part of that great scheme of differentiation by 
means of which division of labour and distinction of 
function are carried out. 

Therefore, friends, neither mediocrity nor all-roundness 
is in our programme. We have the passions of our 
kind ; and we desire not to sell them, but to forge 
them into power. 

How, then, can we prevent the ex-centricities of our 
minds and hearts from weakening and injuring the 
nervous structure which is, for the present, their enforced 
dwelling-place and their necessary implement ? 

" All-roundness " of character and attainment depends 
on balance between each number in Table C and the 
corresponding number in Table D. The health of a 
nervous system depends upon balance between Table C 
as a whole and Table D as a whole. 

Get that idea well fixed in your mind before we go 
any further ; and remember that, for our present purpose, 
it matters very little whether you are thinking of my 
tables or of any similar ones which you may have con- 
structed for yourself. 

The health of the nervous system depends on a 
balance between Table C as a whole and Table D as a 
whole. 

The forging of passion into power depends on com- 
bining the greatest amount that is practically workable 
of unbalancement between any particular pair of lines, 
with equipoise of the tables as a whole ; that is to say, 
balancing exaggeration on one line in one table by 
an equal exaggeration of one or more other lines in the 
other table. 

I said : the maximum of unbalancement that is practi- 



Balance of the Nervous System 77 

cally workable. There are certain qualities and attain- 
ments the total absence of which is so inconvenient, so 
hampers one in whatever one wants to do, and makes 
one so burdensome to other people, that no one who can 
possibly help it should grow up totally devoid of them. 
No one who can help it should grow up quite unable to 
read, or totally devoid of the sense of punctuality. How 
far differentiation may be carried in the future none of 
us can predict as yet. At the present stage of evolution 
all human beings have to learn to do certain things their 
aptitude for which is naturally very weak. 

But learning to do that for which we have no natural 
aptitude puts a great strain on the nervous energy. 
The cost in effort is very large. Therefore the task of 
exercising weak faculties, of learning uncongenial tasks, 
should not be undertaken when the supply of force is 
very low if this can be avoided; it cannot be considered 
a remedy or re-creation or mode of recuperation. Before 
it is , entered upon, it is advisable to see that the 
mechanism by means of which nerves and brain are 
charged with force is in good working order. 

I have said working order. All recuperation of 
energy is effected by the working of something. When 
a patient is ordered to be idle as a means of recupera- 
tion, it is in order to leave time for the working of lungs, 
heart, and digestive organs to pump some force into his 
flesh out of the air and food. When they cease to work, 
the relaxation of his muscular tissues is not that of 
recuperation but that of death. 

There is a similar pumping action by which nervous 
energy is brought out of unseen cosmic sources on to 
the nerves and brain. We need to get it into effective 



7 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 

working order and keep it working steadily if we are to 
do the exhausting business of exercising faculties which 
are weak, and performing tasks which are uncongenial. 

Let us study the nerve-pump a little, in order that we 
may understand its construction before we begin tinker- 
ing at it at random. 

Its efficacy appears to depend, like that of every sort 
of pump in the world, whether natural or artificial, on 
an alternation of contrary motions. The alternation 
seems to be between Table C and Table D. The pump- 
ing work itself should not be needlessly exhausting ; for 
this purpose it is desirable that it should be carried on 
by means of those faculties in each table which are not 
so weak that their action causes of itself excessive strain. 

Moreover, any kind of friction or jolting causes waste ; 
and in order to avoid friction it is desirable that the 
whole mechanism should be in a condition of free 
mobility, and, as nearly as possible, in one of perfect 
equipoise. We are using the words "balance" and 
" equipoise " ; we must try to attach to them some definite 
meaning. 

When such words as balance and equipoise are used 
in relation to physical matters, no one is misled by them ; 
everyone understands them to refer to a state of mobile- 
stable equilibrium. But when they are used to describe 
a mental condition, many persons suppose them to 
connote the stolid variety of stable equilibrium. In 
order, therefore, to clear away misapprehension we will 
begin by defining the terms we are going to use. 

If you try gently to raise one edge of a heavy table 
so that it shall have only two legs on the floor, you fail. 
If you try more energetically, and raise it a very little 



Balance of the Nervous System 79 

way, it falls back, as soon as you take your hands away, 
into its former position, and stays in it. The condition 
of such a table is that of a stolid or fixed " stable 
equilibrium." 

The condition of unstable equilibrium is that of a 
rickety little table, which a slight push will cause to fall 
over. This condition reaches its climax in the case of a 
stick, cut off straight at the end, which has been made 
to stand upright on the floor ; the least touch sends it 
over. It has no tendency to recover its lost balance. 
A clever juggler can, however, poise it on his finger, and 
by incessant attention restore its balance, before it falls, 
every time it leans over. 

There is a third possible condition, that of a mobile- 
stable equilibrium. This is the condition to which we 
refer when we speak of a pair of scales being balanced, 
or in equipoise; the pans are equally weighted, and a 
touch will move them up or down ; but when left to 
itself the whole apparatus tends to return to a " normal " 
position of equipoise. Many toys illustrate this mode 
of balance ; none better than the old-fashioned tumbler 
doll, which stands on the flat surface of a hemisphere of 
wood. A breath will set the toy rocking in any direc- 
tion, but it recovers immediately, and then sways over 
in the opposite direction; and so backwards and 
forwards till the momentum is worn out by the slight 
friction and the rocking motion dies out, when the doll 
is found to have settled back into her original position. 
She owes her stability not to any stolidity but to being 
judiciously loaded. 

The old Cornish Logan stone was a famous instance 
of this kind of equilibrium. 



80 The Forging of Passion into Power 

To our Celtic forefathers the Logan was sacred. 
And when a set of young naval officers destroyed the 
fine balance of the Cornish Logan and reduced it to a 
state of stolid equilibrium, they were railed at as drunken 
ruffians, and ordered, under pain of severe punishment, 
to do the best they could to repair the mischief they 
had caused. When a set of persons (in or out of holy 
orders) make a career of inflicting the analogous out- 
rage on the delicate equipoise of children's minds, they 
are called " successful sc . . . " — well, never mind what 
they are called', let those wear the cap who find it fits 
them. You and I are not, we hope, upsetting other 
people's Logans, except occasionally and by accident ; 
we do not make it a career or do it on purpose. 

Let us go back to the inquiry which concerns us. 
The Logan is an idle, useless thing, a symbol merely 
(but sacred because a symbol) of a great truth. The 
brain of a child is neither idle nor useless ; it has a very 
real function, viz. : — to pump force directly from unseen 
cosmic stores on to the nervous system. I use the word 
" pump " advisedly ; the brain brings force from the 
unseen on to the nervous system when it carries on 
steadily a movement of rocking or alternation. This 
movement goes on to more effective purpose, and with 
less friction, in proportion as the equipoise is more 
complete and the balance more perfect. 

Race-inheritance, local custom, claims of duties, family 
ties, affections and tradition — these are the loadings 
which make the equipoise "stable," i.e. determine a 
position towards which the mind tends when coming to 
rest. But there should be no fixity or friction to prevent 
its swaying temporarily out of that position in any 



Balance of the Nervous System 8 1 

direction, on the slightest stimulus from without. On 
this condition, mobility being at its maximum and 
friction at its minimum, the successive events of life set 
up a maximum of force-induction with a minimum of 
waste. 

Now the balance, the rocking, is between Table C 
and Table D. (As I said before, if you do not think 
my distribution of the items in the two tables satis- 
factory you had better write out one for yourself which 
seems to you more so.) But as the very fact of exerting 
a weak faculty uses up force, the rocking action should 
be set up, the friction overcome, the equipoise restored, 
and the nervous system saturated with force, by the 
alternate action of faculties naturally strong or already 
in good working-practice, before the attempt is made to 
get into use those which are weak, either by nature or 
from artificial disuse. 

In this chapter we are trying to get a clear idea of 
the general meaning of nervous balance. I will there- 
fore give a familiar instance, just by way of clearing up 
our conceptions of its mode of working. 

If digestive power (No. i in C) is weak and the 
character generous or dreamy, and health has suffered 
from want of food, it is unwise to begin treatment, either 
by loading the stomach with more food than it is able 
to digest, or by having much recourse to condiments 
which directly stimulate appetite and digestion. It is 
found better to begin by exercising the time-sense, if 
that be in fairly good working order ; laying stress on 
punctuality, especially in the time of taking food ; and 
by feeding to the sound of music, not of a very refined 
or emotional or intellectual kind, but such as derives 

6 



82 The Forging of Passion into Power 

most of its charm from a steady marked rhythmic beat, 
such as dance-music, marches, etc. When a little force 
has been generated by this means, the digestion can, 
with less risk of injury, be appealed to to exert itself. 
If the time-sense is so weak that punctuality worries 
and rhythmic music annoys, some other number in 
Table C should be acted on ; No. 3, the sense of the 
concrete, by rousing interest in some concrete process, 
especially some process of growing, manufacturing, or 
cooking food ; or No. 4 may be stimulated by the scent 
or appearance of the food itself. 

The above is given, not as offering new advice but as 
an instance to show the working of the balance in cases 
with which everyone is already familiar. 

The points on which it is desirable to fix attention 
just now are: — 

1. That a rocking alternation between Table C and 
Table D supplies the force necessary for keeping conduct 
in essentials steady. 

2. That any friction in the rocking wastes force. 

3. That obstruction to the rocking is likely to jolt 
conduct off its proper guiding rails. It is found practi- 
cally easier to get children to " behave well," i.e. to act 
in an orderly manner suitable to the needs of their 
environment, if no one tries to interfere with the free 
swinging of their minds between ideas apparently 
contrary to each other or feelings apparently antagon- 
istic to each other. This is the result of experience. 
The same condition of free swing of thought is found 
also to make the acquisition of knowledge both easier 
and less injurious to health of body and mind than it 
otherwise would be. 



Balance of the Nervous System 83 

The following summary of what is known on the 
subject of nerve-balance has received endorsement from 
eminent representatives both of theology and psycho- 
logical science. 

The Creed of Sanity 

Unity is the property of the Infinite, the Absolute, 
the Eternal. Dividedness is the property of the finite, 
the phenomenal, the transitory. Every attempt, either 
to eternalise phenomenal distinctions,or to phenomenalise 
Eternal Unity, is contrary to the true nature of man; 
and tends towards the destruction of mental health. 
The great All is a jealous God, and will not suffer His 
honour to be given to any partial manifestation of good. 
Every finite or phenomenal good which man invests 
with attributes belonging only to the Infinite, avenges 
the majesty of the Unseen Unity by injuring the brain 
of man. 

What force or creative energy is in its own nature we 
do not know ; but we know that every mode of it with 
which we are acquainted works by a pulsation of contrary 
motions. All forms are evolved by pulsating Force, yet 
itself is necessarily formless. 

Man is the child of this pulsating or alternating 
Creator ; not His mere handy work, made arbitrarily, 
unlike Himself; but the outcome of His very thought- 
processes; and sanity, for us, means thinking as He 
thinks, so far as we think at all. And He thinks, or, at 
least, works, in an incessant rhythmic pulsation of 
alternate constructing and sweeping away. Man should 
imitate this pulsating activity within his own mind. His 
studies should alternate the formation of defined and 



84 The Forging of Passion into Power 

contrasted conceptions with the unifying of those con- 
ceptions ; and his religious exercises should suspend all 
concrete conceptions in adoration of the inconceivable 
Unity. If we thus embody the principle of pulsation in 
our thought-life, it becomes a source of constant power, 
like the movement of our lungs ; if we forget it, we waste 
force at each effort. False religions tend to arrest the 
natural fading away of things that have served their 
purpose, whether those things be visible forms or mental 
conceptions. But the token of the covenant made by 
Infinite Knowledge with man, is the Rainbow, which no 
man can capture, or embalm, or enshrine : which is made 
by the breaking up of the one light into many colours, 
to fade, before long, into the unity of white light again ; 
and which, when it fades, leaves nowhere in the world a 
trace of its ever having existed, except on man's heart 
an impression of spiritual beauty, and in his mind a 
knowledge of the laws of light. 

It is vain that we haste to rise early and late take 
rest, and devour many carefully compiled text-books ; to 
those who love the Invisible, formless, alternate-beating 
Unity, the knowledge which is power comes even during 
sleep. 



CHAPTER X 

THE INVERT CONSCIOUSNESS 

Five years ago the reading public was startled by the 
production of a book x written in prison, which contained 
two apparently conflicting revelations. One portion was 
such a picture of anomalous selfishness as made the 
crimes of which the author had been convicted seem 
light by comparison. The other consisted of a masterly 
attempt, and perhaps the first real attempt known in 
literature, to analyse the intellectual characteristics of 
Jesus of Nazareth. What is the mysterious underground 
link of connection between the sinner and the Saviour 
which gave to Oscar Wilde an insight into the mind of 
Christ that St Agnes or St John might envy ? We are 
accustomed to think that a repentant thief has his share 
of Paradise, and that Magdalene was forgiven because 
she loved much ; but what opened the door of Revelation 
to an unrepentant man who, on his own showing, had no 
idea of the meaning of love, except as connected with 
the gratification of his own sensations and superficial 
emotions ? 

There exists a condition of inverse consciousness which 
appears to be the common basis of the highest genius 
and the most incurable insanity ; of the most sublime 

1 De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde. 
85 



86 The Forging of Passion into Power 

renunciation and the most abject depravity ; of the most 
illuminating logic and the most unreasoning perverse- 
ness. The origin, the cause, of this inverse conscious- 
ness is hidden in mystery ; we may, perhaps, get some 
light upon it when we have succeeded in solving the 
similar but simpler question, why the scarlet pimpernel, 
which usually produces red flowers with blue centres, 
occasionally inverts, producing blue flowers with red 
centres. A tendency to occasional inversion exists both 
in nature and in human consciousness; and we must 
accept the fact that it does so. We must also accept 
this other fact — that individuals of invert consciousness, 
whether it has manifested itself as genius or as insanity, 
as logic or as perverseness, as sublime indifference to 
one's own suffering or as abject indifference to right 
and wrong, understand each other instinctively as no 
ordinary mortals understand any of them. 

The invert may be described as a spontaneous philo- 
sopher, in this sense, viz., that, whereas the highest 
religious philosophy leads us towards a belief that there 
must be a goodness in all things, even those which seem 
to us evil, the invert knows, without any proof or learn- 
ing, that some things are good which seem to himself 
evil. Most little children avoid or hate whatever causes 
them the sensation of pain. Advancing experience (in 
the cricket field and elsewhere) teaches them that it is 
advisable to learn to bear pain with fortitude ; and that 
those who will not do so are shut out from many joys 
and pleasures ; but, to little children, pain, so far as it 
influences them at all, is distasteful. But I knew one 
infant, who, at a year and a half old, seemed to take 
keen interest in pain. Like all inverts, he was incon- 



The Invert Consciousness 87 

sistent ; the flesh was weak though the spirit was willing ; 
if he hurt himself badly he would scream like any 
normal child. But as soon as he recovered from the 
shock, he would crawl (he still crawled more easily 
than he walked) to the object which had hurt him 
and knock himself up against it, more gently, but 
repeatedly ; apparently trying to reproduce, on a small 
and manageable scale, the sensation which, on the 
larger scale, had overpowered him; and looking the 
while as much absorbed and interested as if he had 
found a new toy. 1 

We are all influenced in some way by the public 
opinion of persons of our own age, rank, and society. 
Most of us incline naturally to follow it. Inverts, how- 
ever, are impelled against an action when public opinion 
is in favour of it, and towards it when public opinion 
condemns it. It is known to schoolmasters that a far 
better protection against vice than any sermonising by 
grown-ups is a strong public opinion, among the boys 
themselves, that vice is "caddish" and "bad form." 
There are boys, here and there, who would be far more 
attracted towards any action by the fact of its being 
considered " bad form " than by any personal pleasure 
they could derive from it. These are the boys who 
originate bad customs ; the majority follow where they 
are led. Probably Oscar Wilde was, in boyhood, one of 
the devotees of " bad form " for its own sake. 

The line of cleavage between what seems good and 
what seems evil varies according to age, time, circum- 
stances, and individual taste ; the mark of the invert is 

1 The child who deliberately hurt himself was grandson to the 
man who wrote The Mystery of Pain. 



88 The Forging of Passion into Power 

that he is attracted towards a thing by the very fact 
that he is at the moment fearing it, or feeling it to be 
" evil." 

James Hinton was a man abstemious by taste, and 
preserved from personal vice by his reverence for 
womanhood and his passionate tenderness towards the 
suffering. But he took as much pains to acquire a 
reputation for being bad, as most men do to preserve a 
reputation for being good. He once gave, in my hearing, 
as an explanation of some of his anomalous vagaries : — 
u My God was a vagabond chap, with a taste for low 
company, who died on the gallows." I quote this, not 
as my opinion about the Christ, but to explain why 
I call J. Hinton an invert, and what it was which both 
he and Oscar Wilde perceived in the " Mind of Christ " 
which escapes the perception of more normal persons. 
It is needless to point out how unfortunate is the 
influence of such utterances, made at random in presence 
of persons younger or less earnest than the speaker. I 
only point out that J. Hinton, a man of pure and 
abstemious life, saw the Saviour in that aspect. It was 
his way of recognising the truth of the Divine paradox : 
" That the lowest place was that which the Highest 
chose." 

Most Christians think of the earth life of Christ as a 
short sorrow, and of the adoration of Christendom as 
what He desires. J. Hinton used to say : " One would 
accept being crucified, it does not last long. But to be 
set up as a standard and have truths revealed to other 
men trampled down in honour of one, that is a fate to 
make the stoutest heart quail." 

It is cheap and easy to dismiss such utterances as 



The Invert Consciousness 89 

" fantastic " and " crazy." But the invert consciousness 
exists, and exerts influence ; and those who are guiding 
the education of the nation should surely study how to 
direct it towards useful ends. 

In the "Preparation of the Child for Science," I 
pointed out a fact which has always struck me as terribly 
significant. If we take a two-dimensional section of a 
gentian, we may get a bud-tip appearing, in section, as 
an isolated anomaly, in no visible connection with any 
portion of the open flower. But if, instead of cutting 
the thing to suit our flat views, we had looked at it in 
three dimensions, we should have seen, not only that 
the odd point was connected with the flower through its 
stalk, but also that it marks the precise place where 
another flower would have opened in course of time had 
we not interfered to reduce the whole to the two- 
dimensional condition. 

Various mathematical studies have thrown a vivid 
light on the phenomenon of inversion ; among them is 
one by Babbage, published in 1837, under the title 
Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Lines and shapes in three 
dimensions which, in themselves, are continuous and 
normal, produce, if their shadows are cast on flat paper, 
all manner of anomalies, inversions, and irregularities. 
It is inferred that normal facts in higher dimen- 
sions might, when reflected on the human three- 
dimensional consciousness, account for anomalies and 
apparently miraculous conditions. The experiment was 
therefore tried of inverting certain relations in the 
equations of regular curves and families of curves. A 
most interesting result followed. The inverted equation 
to a curve sometimes gives what is called a "singular 



9° The Forging of Passion into Power 

point, " related to the original curve almost as a " rogue 
elephant " is to his tribe ; standing aloof, in no relation 
visible to the eye with any other point on the curve. On 
the other hand, the invert equation to a family of curves 
may produce what is called an " envelope," i.e. a curve 
in contact with every other member of the family. 
These anomalous points or curves, worked out in invert 
equations, are called in mathematical terminology, 
singular solutions- Numa Hartog, the young Jew whose 
brilliant achievement in mathematics was the occasion 
of opening university honours to his co-religionists, said 
to me, in a puzzled kind of way, that the chapter on 
singular solutions in my husband's Treatise on Differen- 
tial Equations, "does not read like a chapter of an 
ordinary text-book." It would be strange if it did, 
seeing that it resulted from a devout study of the mystic 
literature of all ages, from Isaiah's prophecies to Tenny- 
son's " St Agnes' Eve." My husband, in the last years 
of his life, devoted much time to the study of Frederick 
Denison Maurice, the theological reformer, and, not 
long before his death, wrote : — " I have made out what 
puts the whole subject of Singular Solutions into a state 
of Unity." Following up clues given by him at that 
period, some extra-academic mathematicians have worked 
on the problem so near his heart throughout his life, viz. : 
—Given a child of any anomalous type, how should his 
education be directed towards forming in him personal 
habits tending towards constructive genius rather than 
perverse destructiveness ; towards illuminating synthesis 
rather than brilliant paradox ; towards useful originality 
rather than vicious curiosity ; towards a reverent and 
sparing use of pleasures, towards renunciation of that 



The Invert Consciousness 9 1 

for which other men seek, rather than towards audacious 
snatching at what they feel to be evil ? 

When I have tried to call the attention of heads of 
schools to the dangers to which children of exceptional 
type are exposed under existing schemes of moral and 
religious education, I have been met by replies to the 
effect that a school must be organised to suit the 
majority, and that exceptional children must take their 
chance in the general melee — a dangerous doctrine in 
itself, it seems to me, because genius has great influence, 
for good or ill, over the masses of average men and 
women. But besides this, it is thought by several 
experienced persons that the scheme of mental habit 
suggested for the protection of genius from its special 
mental and moral dangers would in reality be good, 
not bad, for the development and stamina of average 
children. 

We are often told by publishers and editors that the 
public is not interested in speculation of this kind. But 
if England takes no interest in the question whether its 
young men of abnormal genius shall lay themselves on 
the altar of National Reform or rot away in mere phos- 
phorescent decadence, why was Oscar Wilde condemned 
to prison, and why do we perform religious services in 
honour of Jesus of Nazareth ? 



CHAPTER XI 

THE FIXING OF GOOD HABITS 

The question of Ethical Stability should be of interest 
to parents, and indeed to every one. We are all trying 
to form in ourselves and our children such habits as we 
consider good ; but we leave it too much to mere chance 
to decide whether these good habits are being formed 
in a manner calculated to make them stable under stress 
and strain, or in such a way that they will readily col- 
lapse during illness or over-fatigue. Some change of 
habit must be made when nervous energy collapses; 
that change should take the form of cessation from use- 
ful activities. Such suspension of activity facilitates 
re-storation of latent force ; too often, however, the 
change takes, instead, the form of active violation of 
good habits of self-restraint previously acquired. The 
question which of the two directions a temporary loss 
of force shall take depends very little on the desire of 
the individual at the time (very few persons desire, at 
the outset of a fit of nervous exhaustion, to become 
drunkards, morphia-maniacs, or murderers), but very 
much upon the manner in which the habit of self-restraint 
was originally formed, the basis upon which it was first 
established. 

There are several errors which may be made in forming 

92 



The Fixing of Good Habits 93 

habits of sobriety, etc. One error consists in indulgence 
of physical appetites, in themselves innocent and 
healthy, at wrong portions of the mental life. 

The mental life may be divided into two portions : 
one in which the faculty of discrimination between 
external objects is fully awake, and which we call 
phase A ; the other in which the faculty of discrimination 
is dormant, or partially so: we call this portion phase B. 

Phase B includes sleep, drowsiness, day-dreaming, and 
"brown studies," all of which are normal and healthy 
states if not indulged in to excess or at inconvenient 
seasons. There are unhealthy modes of phase B, which 
do not concern us at present. Phase B also includes 
the condition of active mental abstraction, in which 
general conceptions are formed ; in which attention is so 
concentrated on the task of seizing the point of similarity 
between two or more things or ideas, that it is not actively 
awake to the points of difference between them. The 
mood in which a child notices that a cherry is soft and 
a marble hard, that the cherry is good to eat and the 
marble is not, that the sun is bigger than the moon, 
belongs to phase A ; the mood in which it dawns on 
him that all these things are round, the mood in which 
there is being formed within him the conception of 
roundness, belongs to phase B. The mood in which a 
musician com-poses belongs to phase B ; that in which 
he afterwards corrects his composition, to phase A. The 
pouring out of one's soul in music, verse, or impassioned 
prose, belongs to B ; the decision which parts of the 
outpour are suitable to give to the public, belongs to A. 

The organisation of education can never be anything 
but empirical and chaotic till teachers recognise the 



94 The Forging of Passion into Power 

differences between these two phases, and the relations 
between the two. 

One of the points which should be attended to by 
those who would forge passion into power is that of 
handwriting. If the neurotic individual has taken pains 
to cultivate, for his use during phase A, a handwriting 
which is both legible and characteristic, this tends to 
keep clear the distinction between phase A and phase 
B, for he will find that any change in his usual hand- 
writing indicates the oncoming either of phase B or of 
some such disturbance of the nerve-centres as accom- 
panies the irregular intermixing of A and B. 

Nothing is more important for the future ethical 
stability of the individual than that his constitution 
should be trained to receive and expect physical enjoy- 
ments only during phase A. Neutrality as to physical 
sensations, as far as this can be secured, should be the 
concomitant of phase B. 

The reason for this is obvious. Physical enjoyments 
should be taken with discrimination, both as to kind and 
as to quantity ; the body has a right, so to speak, to 
claim a normal amount of pleasures ; but it should be 
trained to time its requirements in that direction so as 
to make its claim during the times when the discrimin- 
ating faculty is awake, rather than when something 
else is going on in the mind which is incompatible with 
the full alertness of the discriminating faculty. 

Many pious followers of ancient religions fell into the 
strange error of supposing that because the seeking of 
physical pleasure is unsuited to states of internal revela- 
tion, therefore the voluntary incurring of pain is a 
suitable adjunct to those states. There could hardly 



The Fixing of Good Habits 95 

be a greater mistake. Whatever may be the educative 
value of suffering — a wide question, not to be touched 
on here, — the body should be trained to seek, in dream- 
moods, not strong sensation of any kind but neutrality. 
The mind should be so trained that it tends, when its 
discriminating faculties are in less than full activity, not 
to mortify the body but to forget it. 

We will now suggest precautions to be taken with a 
view to training certain kinds of desire for physical 
pleasure and physical self-assertion into the healthy 
habit of going to sleep whenever the faculty of dis- 
crimination is lethargic or dormant. 

Some persons have carried the theory of synchronism 
so far as to insist that infants should not be allowed 
to suck themselves to sleep. The present writer doubts 
the necessity for any such interference, as long as the 
food is uniform, monotonous, and absolutely natural. 
But there can be no question as to the wisdom of begin- 
ning the rhythmic discipline as soon as the child is old 
enough to have sweets. No sweets or biscuits to suck 
oneself to sleep with should be allowed. 

No day-dreaming should be allowed at meal times. 
Food should be taken slowly ; and eating may be inter- 
rupted by short intervals of chatter and laughter; but 
no silent dawdling should be allowed during the meal. 
A period of silence after a meal is not bad in its way. 

Unusually nice things, choice fruits, etc., should always 
be the concomitant of social festivities, not the con- 
solation of loneliness. If you have to leave a child 
alone, and wish to give it some compensation for solitude, 
let this take the form of a mental interest (a fresh toy, 
picture, book, etc.), not of a physical sensation. 



96 The Forging of Passion into Power 

Table-courtesies, attention to other people's wants, 
etc., have another function besides those of training in 
" good manners," and of promoting unselfishness ; they 
help to keep up the habit of synchronism between the 
act of feeding the body and the mental condition of 
alertness as to outer facts. Get the child, by every 
possible means, into the habit of noticing who wants 
salt or bread, whenever he is eating ; and of not noticing 
what is going on round him when he is engaged in 
study. 

A hostess who invites friends, especially young friends, 
to partake of luxurious food and choice fruits, or to 
make jokes in a scented and flower-bedecked room, is 
morally bound to keep the conversation strictly on the 
discriminative plane. It need not be frivolous, or un- 
improving ; it may be about botany, astronomy, 
politics, or history; but it should deal with the super- 
ficial aspect of those things ; with obvious differences, 
not with underlying unity between them. This caution 
should be especially observed if pleasant wines are 
offered. On the other hand, a hostess who intends that 
her house should be a centre of philosophy, a place of 
exercise for the faculty of discovering general principles 
underlying phenomena apparently diverse or discordant, 
is bound to keep a severe check on her housekeeper in 
the matter of showing what the establishment can do 
in the way of a luxurious feed. The drinkables, on such 
occasions, should be, as far as possible, teetotal in kind. 
If any of the guests are invalids and cannot digest 
without a modicum of alcohol, it should be sound in 
quality but not specially tempting in flavour, and should 
not be pressed on anyone, especially on the young. 



The Fixing of Good Habits 97 

Wherever the underlying principle of monism, of 
unity among apparent opposites, is being thought of, 
brilliant witticisms should be severely at a discount. 
So should dramatic gesticulation, and, in fact, all 
spontaneous self-assertion of the body, and all that 
ministers to mental show-i-ness. During discussions 
of underlying principles, men and women should be 
encouraged to treat each other as comrades in investiga- 
tion, rather than as persons of opposite sex. Polite 
attentions from men as such to women as such should 
be accompanied by conversation which encourages the 
sense of contrast and the exercise of faculties of 
discrimination. 

Careless readers might suggest that all this savours of 
Puritanism. A moment's reflection suffices to remind 
us that Puritanism discouraged fun, feasting, frolic and 
flirting, at all times. Modern medical science ac- 
knowledges the usefulness of them as integral portions 
of normal life ; it discourages indulgence in them only 
at wrong periods of the mental cycle. From the point of 
view of modern medical science, Pan, the horrible satyr, 
the parent of all the most hideous vices, was really The 
One, The All, the same conception of the Unity of 
Creation as the I Am of Moses ; but — mark the difference 
— approached without the special precautions with which 
Moses surrounded the approach to the Holy Mountain 
whereon he had seen the Unity of the Creator. 

The rules above suggested are important for all 
children. There are certain extra precautions which 
are advisable in the case of highly neurotic young 
persons and of those who possess (or who are possessed 
by ?) that mysterious faculty called Genius. 

7 



9 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 

Genius, of whatever kind, and whatever other elements 
may go to make up its composition, always has for one 
of its main ingredients an unusual development of the 
faculty of monism. Genius does, at certain times, dis- 
criminate very clearly ; but some form or other of what 
we have called " phase B " is, in the man of genius, 
more profound and definite than is the case with 
ordinary mortals. The process of seeing a unity under- 
lying phenomena which to the external discrimination 
seemed diverse, is, for genius, not a mere restful dream, 
but a positive working-implement (intellectual, artistic, 
or spiritual). 

The space at our disposal does not permit us to go 
into the proofs of this assertion ; we need only, here, 
remind our readers that, while ordinary painters can 
produce striking likenesses of individuals, the painter of 
great genius can produce an ideal type-face — say a 
philosopher which is like every portrait of a philosopher 
that one ever saw ; or a maiden who reminds every 
lover of his lady-love ; or a Christ in which every serious- 
minded person sees a resemblance to the teacher who 
has most inspired him ; or a woodland scene which 
makes each admirer suspect that the painter has visited 
his or her own favourite nook in the woods. Similarly, 
while all ordinary astronomers were making observations 
on the motions of the moon, and ordinary physicists on 
the fall of various bodies towards the earth, Newton 
declared that the two sets of movements were subject 
to a common law ; while ordinary naturalists were busy 
discussing which plants or animals were related to each 
other, and where science was compelled to infer that 
special kind of creation which constitutes a separate 



The Fixing of Good Habits 99 

species, Darwin showed that species are probably old 
and fixed varieties. 

Genius is not a disease ; it is rather, like parturition, 
a condition of normal and healthy fertility, but it is a 
condition in which, under our present artificial social 
conditions, extra precautions are desirable in order to 
prevent its becoming the starting-point of disease. 

The precautions specially desirable during the com- 
position phase of genius are such as the following : — 
Food rather less in bulk than the individual's usual 
quantity (to be made up for when the fit has passed 
over), lighter and more digestible in kind, and less 
highly flavoured. Alcohol (if any) less in quantity than 
usual, and never taken in a room alone, or between 
meals. Extra reserve in intercourse with the opposite 
sex. Strict chastenedness of conversation ; abstaining 
not only from the least approach to anything unseemly 
in itself, but also from all levity, from jests at the expense 
of others; from even the appearance of irreverence or 
unkind speech ; and great moderation in the matter of 
brilliant and showy wit. 

Young people of genius, to do them justice, nearly all 
evolve an instinct of self-protection and would naturally 
seek the shelter of such precautions as I have indicated. 
But officious friends are much too prone to interfere, 
wondering why the youth or girl cannot be " like other 
people"; and especially why he cannot behave, now, 
like his usual self. If he is ill, let him go to a doctor. 
If he is not ill enough to need medical care, they "have 
no patience with whims " in the matter of food. And 
why need he give himself airs of being glum and self- 
absorbed ? He is not working so hard as all that comes 



i oo The Forging of Passion into Power 

to. Besides, he found time to go for a walk with a 
serious friend ; why couldn't he, instead, find time to 
join in the fun in the drawing-room and to dance attend- 
ance on his girl-cousins ? And so on. 

"Why cannot he be like other people?" Because 
Nature has decreed that, at certain crises of his life, he 
shall not ; that he must be more reserved, more reticent, 
more chastened than others need to be, or else he will 
become worse than others are. Because, while the fit of 
corn-position is on him, the man is a consecrated 
priest and prophet of Unity ; he is not, for the time, a 
member of ordinary human society ; he is bound to 
dwell alone in the desert; and, if not faithful to The 
Holy One, terribly likely to fall into the clutches of the 
wicked, leering Pan. 

Some writer has said that " A woman should be an 
angel to marry a genius " ; and sometimes indeed it 
does seem so. But the wives of men of genius would 
have much less need of angelic forbearance in later life, 
if they had, before marriage, enough common-sense and 
moral arithmetic to count the cost of what they are 
about to do; if they would decide at once, either to 
forego the special joys which genius sheds around it, or 
to endure the extra precautions necessary to preserve 
its delicate balance. 

We have said that the body should be trained to time 
its cravings for physical enjoyment so as to synchronise 
with mental moods of dis-crimination. This rule might 
legitimately be carried out absolutely and without re- 
servation, and should be carried out as far as circum- 
stances make it possible. In all moods to which the 
words com-pose and corn-position can be applied, the 






The Fixing of Good Habits 101 

body should seek ease, neutrality of sensation, the mere 
supplying of its needs ; all sensation which is either 
acutely pleasurable or novel, as well as all freaks of 
physical curiosity and all vigorous and exciting modes 
of muscular exertion, should co-incide with moods of 
active mental dis-crimination. 

There is another canon of ethical safety, quite as 
important to observe as the above, but it cannot be so 
absolutely or clearly stated. It will therefore need a 
little more explanation. It is that of training the body 
to abstain, when the discriminating faculties are wholly 
or partially dormant, from spontaneous ex-pression. 
There are regions of exception to this rule ; if it were 
enforced throughout the whole range of possibilities of 
physical expression, it would cut at the root of all out- 
ward expression of the mental process of corn-position. 
The hand must write (whether words or notes), the 
voice must utter, the brush must paint, while the mind 
is too busy listening to the Inspirations of the Unseen 
Source of Harmony to exercise its critical discriminating 
faculties to the full ; hence that need of after-correction 
so much insisted on by all really great writers and 
artists. There must be ex-pression of some sort during 
creative, com-posing moods, else there can be no art ; 
the hand must be trained to register impulses as they 
pass through the half-conscious mind, in order that the 
discriminating faculty may afterwards possess what has 
been so registered, as material to work upon. All true 
art consists of selection made by the discriminating 
faculty, when fully awake, out of material inspired 
through the com-posing faculty while the discrimination 
was wholly or partially dormant. All originality in art 



102 The Forging of Passion into Power 

depends on the sacred right-to-go-wrong among art 
material, compensated by a corresponding after-exercise 
of the correcting-power of discrimination. 

But, as impulses towards physical activity of a harm- 
less kind must be freely indulged during phase B, in 
the interests of the artistic development, there is all the 
more need that the body should be sternly trained in 
the habit of using, in dreamy moods, only such modes 
of ex-pression as can be harmlessly mis-used. It ought 
to be more generally noticed than it hitherto has been, 
that all kinds of freaks of curiosity pass through the sub- 
conscious mind of imaginative persons ; and of all those 
of neurotic, ascetic, or specially religious temperament. 
Through the sub-conscious mind of such persons there 
pass very often (alternating with other and more useful 
thoughts) such ideas as : — " I am tired of life " ; " John 
Smith is a nuisance; the world would be better off if he 
were out of it " ; "I wonder what it feels like to be 
drunk " ; "I should like to get into an opium-dream," 
etc., etc., etc. A medical man of long experience assures 
me that, under such circumstances, a fatal act may be 
committed by the hand, in response to the freakish 
impulse of the sub-conscious mind, before the discriminat- 
ing judgment has had time to take cognisance of what 
is going on. Juries in such cases debate as to whether 
the act was wilful or involuntary, whether their verdict 
shall be " accident," or " temporary insanity," or " guilty." 
The verdict should properly be : — " Guilty of neglect of 
precautions for the preservation of moral sanity." 

No person of dreamy, religious, philosophic, artistic, 
or mystical temperament should trust himself alone in a 
room with loaded firearms, until he has acquired, by 



The Fixing of Good Habits 103 

practice in handling arms while unloaded, the habits 
which go to make the handling of them, when loaded, 
safe. Among the most important of those habits is that 
of never handling them at all except while the discrimin- 
ating faculty is fully awake. For similar reasons, the 
hands of all such persons should be early trained never 
to gravitate, in any form of phase B, towards anything 
in which a drug might be contained. Preservation from 
crime and vice depends, for any neurotic, far less on the 
absence of potentially criminal moods than on the habit 
of not expressing the impulses of dream-moods, even 
when these are good, in any manner or material by which 
harm could be done if the impulse itself were an evil one. 
Pens and paper, pencils, spare canvases, oddments of 
paint, waste crewels and silks, are the safest kinds of 
implements with which to express inspiration as it passes. 
And the original register should never be shown to any 
public, till it has been well weeded or corrected in a fully 
discriminating mood. 

One of the most perilous habits which an original 
thinker can acquire is that of running about among his 
friends ex-pressing his inspirations at their crude stage. 
Every original thinker gets into states in which wonder- 
ful suggestions occur to him, of analogies or likenesses 
between facts previously seen as diverse. To many, the 
joy at times is so overwhelming — and at other times the 
sense of mere fun is so exhilarating — that one feels one 
cannot bear it alone ; one must share the delight and 
wonder with someone. Yet the fact must be faced : — 
the habit of ex-plaining one's vision to one's fellow 
mortals, while the vision-mood is still on one's soul, is 
dangerous to moral sanity. The great safeguard for 



io4 The^Forging of Passion into Power 

the thinker is that which kept Moses safe among all the 
flashing spiritual electricity of Mount Sinai : — the deep 
consciousness of being, not the originator of the pleasant 
thought but its recipient ; of being, for the time, not a 
teacher of other men but a pupil of Eternal Unity ; of 
being in the actual presence of an Unseen Father, Who 
not only gives the Revelation, but Who also — if one can, 
without irreverence, venture to say so — fully appreciates 
the fun. 

The rest of this chapter will be slightly more abstract 
and scientific than the preceding part ; but any reader 
who has the least acquaintance with the conception 
alluded to in modern educational works as " the doctrine 
of association " will find no difficulty in following the 
reasoning. 

If we are accustomed to do a certain act, voluntarily, 
whenever a certain idea or emotion is stirred, the act 
becomes associated in our nervous system with that idea 
or emotion, and tends, so to speak, to do itself at the 
stimulus of the idea or emotion; the presence of the 
idea causes us to perform the act involuntarily, by sheer 
force of habit. For this reason it is important, not only 
to form good habits, but to associate them, during the 
process of formation, with motives, ideas, and emotions 
likely to last throughout life. 

For the first twelve years or so of a child's life it is 
impossible to guess what class of emotions or ideas will 
appeal most strongly to him later on. Therefore it is 
wiser not to try to link the good habits which are being 
formed with any motive which seems to sway him 
specially ; but rather to appeal to quite general ones : — 
all the persons about him, especially those with whom 



The Fixing of Good Habits 105 

he lives, wish him to be clean, punctual, polite, etc., and 
things will be made pleasant to himself if he does as they 
wish. This vague combination of altruism and egoism 
is a sufficient basis for the formation of character in 
childhood. During the period of adolescence the 
motives which will ultimately dominate begin to stir in 
the consciousness. Parents and teachers too often make 
the mistake of imagining that it comes within their 
function to determine by what motives a pupil shall be 
swayed. That question does not depend on any de- 
cision of theirs. As well might a hatching hen decide 
that the eggs on which she is sitting shall develop into 
partridges and not into ducks ! What does depend, to 
some extent, on the hen's action, is, whether the develop- 
ment which is going on shall be full and harmonious or 
arrested and impotent ; whether the ducks or partridges 
(as the case may be) shall have their limbs in good 
working order, or shall be lop-sided and helpless to 
carry out their own purposes. " If you train up a child 
in the way he should go," said an eminent psychologist 
of the last generation, " when he is old he will not 
depart from it. If he departs from the way in which 
you have tried to train him, it is because you have tried 
to train him in a way which he should not have gone, 
one in which Nature never intended him to go." 

This is now perfectly acknowledged by all psychologists 
worth mentioning. They know quite well that the 
business of the teacher is to found, on a basis of 
motives which exist, habits which will be useful. The 
only correction of this formula which the present writer 
would venture to suggest is an addition. Found habits 
which will be useful on a basis of such among existing 



106 The Forging of Passion into Power 

motives as are likely to prove permanent ; or, in other 
words : — Build up good habits on a basis within which 
falls the centre of gravity of the individual with whom 
you are dealing. 

Now what do we mean by the centre of gravity of a 
character ? 

In any given individual, it will be found that some 
motives potent in phase A lose their hold in B ; and 
some which are potent in B lose hold in A. Some 
desires and ambitions, which appeal strongly to him in 
A, seem to him in B unworthy and trivial ; and some 
aspirations which stir profound emotion in B are judged 



m 



by the waking discrimination of A to be too refined, too 
subtle, too altruistic for the present stage of existence. 
But there is probably always a range of motives which 
appeal to the heart of the individual in both phases. 
Let us picture the whole range of motives which influence 
him in the A phase as represented by the left-hand 
circle in the diagram, and the whole range which 
influence him in the B phase as represented by the right- 
hand one ; we shall think of motives operative only in 
A as Y-motives, those operative only in B as Z-motives, 
while X, the qucesitum, will stand for the (usually small) 
range of motives which stir his deeper emotions during 
his dream-moods, and yet are judged by his waking dis- 
crimination to be practical ; and which are therefore 



The Fixing of Good Habits 1 07 

able to stimulate him both to strenuous effort and to 
steady self-restraint. Within X lies the true centre of 
gravity of the individual's heart and conscience ; " the 
soul that makes him one from first to last." 

Habits formed while motives X are present to the 
mind are unlikely to collapse under any stress and 
strain of life, or even in the conditions respectively 
known as " absence of mind " and as " temporary in- 
sanity." 

It must be observed that the permanent motive is not 
always one predominantly present to consciousness. It 
is revealed rather by the quality of the individual's 
interest in other things than by his conscious interest in 
that thing. A girl may seem at one time devoted to 
music or some art, at another to philosophy or litera- 
ture ; but always under the dominant influence of some 
teacher, and stimulated by his approval. The desire for 
human approval is in this case likely to be a more per- 
manent motive than either art or philosophy. Or a girl 
may be absorbed at one time in the study of music ; at 
another time of history or literature ; and what her soul 
is seeking through its various phases may be the Law of 
rhythmic beats of the Unseen. In such a case, the 
motive which may be relied on as a basis for ethical 
habit is the belief in the retaliations brought about by 
the recoil-power of destiny. A young person may seem 
at one time intensely pious, at another painfully worldly ; 
the motive all through may be an artistic sentiment, 
which causes the imagination to be fascinated, at one 
time by the " beauty of holiness," at another by some 
artistic quality perceived in social life ; the power to trust 
to, in such a case, is neither the influence of the Church 



108 The Forging of Passion into Power 

nor that of the world, but the desire for the outward 
expression of harmonious Law. 

It must be remembered that we are treating here of 
the choice not of a professional career for the future man 
or woman, but of a basis for the formation of habits. 
The bread-winning profession of an individual should be 
of such a kind that he can be interested in it, but can 
also escape entirely from the thought of it when off duty. 
The basis of ethical habit, on the contrary, should be 
some sentiment from which the individual never escapes ; 
which is about his path and about his bed; something 
for the sake of which he is willing to work and the 
thought of which makes it easy to rest; which gives 
life a meaning, and robs death of its sting. 

In no cases, perhaps, can the subject of educational 
disappointment be studied more easily or with more 
profit than in those of little girls who show an early 
taste for what are called domestic pursuits : needlework, 
dusting, and the arrangement of the table or the room. 
Such precocious little housewives often become, in later 
life, the most hopelessly and helplessly undomesticated 
women. The reason of the failure would seem to be 
this : — The mother assumes that her intelligent little 
helper has "domesticated tastes"; whereas the child's 
orderly activity is probably due to its being, at a very early 
age, the only outlet for some nascent passion, either the 
love of approval, or the general instinct of kindness, or the 
desire to help whoever is greater and cleverer than her- 
self. A little girl may be phenomenally clever at 
darning father's socks as long as father is the dominant 
influence of her life, and darning socks the only thing she 
can do for him. If she finds out too early that she can 



The Fixing of Good Habits 109 

help him, or some indulgent uncle, by copying MSS., it 
is much to be feared that the needle will prove to be not 
her true vocation after all, unless special pains are taken 
to cultivate the taste for some years. As soon as the 
child goes to school, domestic work finds itself perhaps 
in violent conflict with the ruling passion ; and the taste 
for it crumbles like a snapped " Rupert's drop," never to 
be restored. Domesticated tastes, in a woman, are the 
normal result of household work having been an outlet 
for the expression of the X-motive between the ages of 
twelve and eighteen. 

The question naturally occurs : — how can parents and 
teachers find the centre of gravity of a young life, how 
discover the ultimately dominant motive ? Very often 
they cannot do so ; perhaps it is not best to probe in 
the matter too curiously. The important thing is that 
they should realise that there is a centre of gravity to 
each young life; and that it lies in the region where 
apparently conflicting passions mutually overlap. They 
will then try to link the habits most important to form, 
not with the passion which seems strongest at any 
given time but with the greatest possible variety of 
motives, in the hope that the good habit will link itself 
with the quality of feeling, whatever that may be, which 
underlies all the various apparent motives. 

In this matter, as in many others, the fact which it 
is most important for us to know is that of our own 
ignorance. We cannot know what is the centre of 
gravity of a young nature; let us then not act as if 
we knew. We know only that it lies at the meeting- 
point of the character's extremes. 

The power in which we must put our trust is not 



1 1 o The Forging of Passion into Power 

our own strength, but the Force which is given off 
where conflicting elements meet. Our Deliverer is not 
any eidolon which we have fashioned with the hands 
of our imagination, but the Unity who reveals Himself 
in the union of apparent opposites. 



CHAPTER XII 

CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND 

No one as yet knows exactly how conscious and un- 
conscious mental action are related to each other. But 
it will assist us in arranging the facts we do know if 
we picture consciousness as a workshop, built over a 
cavity, a sort of dark cavern or cellar, The senses 
(eyes, ears, touch, etc.) are passages which lead out 
into the open air. Raw material is brought through 
these passages into the workshop (consciousness), and 
sent through it into the cellar, whence it can be fetched 
up when wanted. This fetching up from the cellar of 
an idea lodged there beforehand is what we call the 
act of memory or remembering. 

Besides the stairway which leads from the above- 
ground workshop to the cellar, there are other slopes 
or stairways which go direct from the sense-avenues 
to the cellar without passing through the workshop. 1 

Individuals differ greatly in the use which they make 
of the two sets of paths between the cellar and the 
outside world. In some, nearly all material passes 
into memory through consciousness ; others " remember " 
many things which seem never to have passed through 
consciousness at all on the way down to the store-house. 

1 See No. 9 of the Balance-table in Chapter IX. 



1 1 2 The Forging of Passion into Power 

The same difference is observable in the relative use 
of the two sets of passages for passing material back. 

Almost everyone can with more or less accuracy and 
vividness " call up a picture," or sound, or scent, or taste, 
of which he is, at the moment, consciously thinking. 
In that case, the impression has come up from the 
unconscious mind into the conscious mind, and has 
then passed out into the sense-perceptions or door- 
ways. But in some persons stored-up impressions 
come directly up the other stairs, into the sense- 
passage, and thence into consciousness. The majority 
first think of an object or sound or scent or flavour, 
and then picture or "imagine" it; but some see or 
hear or smell or taste it in imagination, and only 
afterwards consciously think of it. To this latter 
mode of perception is commonly given such names as 
clair-voyance, clair-audience, etc. It is as normal and 
natural and healthy as the other, though as yet less 
usual. 

Most people think of an idea and then write it down. 
To some it comes natural to write first, and then receive 
the idea into consciousness by reading it in their own 
handwriting. The one is as " normal " as the other, and, 
in itself, quite as healthy. 

To information brought from the unconscious mind 
to the conscious through the channel of one's own 
handwriting, is usually given the somewhat misleading 
title "automatic writing." (Misleading, because all 
writing which is done without conscious effort is 
automatic in itself; whether dictated by the conscious 
or the unconscious mind.) 

As I said, one mode of conveyance between the 



Conscious and Unconscious Mind 1 1 3 

outer sense and the cavern of unconscious mind is as 
normal and healthy as the other ; each has its function 
and utility. Only it is found important to distinguish 
sounds or sights projected up from the cavern below 
from those which are at the moment entering in from 
the outside. And this is very easy to do when the 
cellar-produced impressions come first up into con- 
sciousness as thoughts and thence are projected on to 
the concrete imagination. A little more training is 
necessary to effect the distinction in the case of 
imaginary impressions which come first as sense im- 
pressions and only afterwards as thoughts. 

But the fact that a faculty is not in working order at 
birth, that it needs training before it can be relied on 
to work efficiently, does not prove either that the faculty 
is useless, or that the possession of it is a symptom of 
disease. 

Confusion has been introduced into this subject by 
three causes. 

First, for many years the medical profession treated 
as "symptoms of insanity" the seeing of visions and 
hearing of voices, and locked up in lunatic asylums our 
best specimens. 

Second, because clairvoyance and clairaudience have 
been considered as symptoms of insanity, those to 
whom they occur become frightened. Instead of taking 
the thing naturally and quietly as a faculty to be used, 
the relatives of the person affected treat it quite wrongly ; 
making the same kind of mistakes as would be made if 
one treated the opening of a kitten's eyes, or any other 
normal product of evolution, as a symptom of disease 
which must be got rid of. In some cases, indeed, the 

8 



1 14 The Forging of Passion into Power 

patient really goes mad of sheer terror because he thinks 
he must be going mad. 

Third, clairvoyants and clairaudients are often well 
aware that their peculiar sense-impressions are con- 
comitants of inspiration. This is, so far, perfectly 
correct. All people are more or less inspired at times, 
and if a person is so constituted as to be subject to 
these so-called hallucinations, it is during the inspired 
moments that they occur. But it does not in the least 
follow that those to whom they occur are more inspired, 
or more truly inspired, than anybody else. The same 
kind of organisation which makes a person clairvoyant 
or clairaudient makes him also conscious when inspira- 
tion is going on. The two things — clairvoyant impres- 
sion and the sensuous consciousness of the fact of being 
inspired — come to the same kind of person and in the 
same physical condition. But inspiration itself comes 
just as strongly and as truly to the same person in 
other states, and to people who are never clairvoyant 
at all. The visions or voices are no test or measure 
either of the intensity, the accuracy, or the value of the 
inspiration. They prove that inspiration is going on. 
The absence of them does not prove it is not going on. 



CHAPTER XIII 

hyperesthesia; adumbrations; hallucina- 
tions; HYSTERIA 

THERE is a condition known as hyperesthesia, in which 
some of the senses or faculties become abnormally 
acute; one sees objects clearly in very faint light, or 
hears slight sounds at incredibly long distances ; while 
quite ordinary amounts of light or noise may be dis- 
tressing. Or the mind may become especially acute in 
grasping certain kinds of ideas, which strike one with 
painful force. In this condition mistaken impressions 
and false ideas are peculiarly liable to register them- 
selves and become part of the permanent furniture of 
the brain. It is well, therefore, to hold oneself with 
special care as near as may be to the Spirit of Truth 
whenever the senses or intellect seem phenomenally 
acute. 

Either hyperaesthesia or the opposite condition, the 
benumbing of certain faculties, may result from excessive 
magnetisation by some other person, who may (or may 
not) be wholly unconscious of the influence which he is 
exerting. The remedy is easy and almost certainly 
efficacious if administered under suitable conditions. 
The person in whom the anomalous symptoms have 
been observed should make himself, or be made, the 

"5 



1 1 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 

reconciling point of hostile forces. He should be 
subjected to the influence of someone whom the source 
of the mischief either despises and is despised by, or 
hates and is hated by, or has wronged and feels wronged 
by. This should be done, if possible, by mutual consent 
of the conflicting parties, as a remedial measure indicated 
by the course of events. The patient's suffering should 
be treated as a token from The Unseen Powers, not 
that the mutual hostility of the parties was wrong or 
was needless from the first, but that the time has come 
for it to cease. 

Children who are subject to hyperesthesia in any 
form, or susceptible of over-magnetisation, should never 
be stimulated to continuous intellectual exertion in any 
one direction. They are the born reconcilers and 
harmonisers of the world : their function is to reveal 
to each other opposing modes of consciousness. At 
school they should have easier intellectual work than is 
found suitable for average children of their age and 
apparent capability; they should be made responsible 
for the lessons being understood by the stupidest and 
most backward in the class ; and be allowed also to 
point out to the teacher where the stupid ones have 
failed to grasp his meaning. Such of them as take up 
literature as a profession should begin their career as 
translators and critics, and not offer their own ideas to 
the world till they have considerable experience in 
making some section of the public understand work 
primarily written for, and more immediately intelligible 
to, some other section. They should never be expected 
or encouraged to join any party in religion or politics. 
That fidelity to party, that esprit de corps, which for 



Hyperesthesia 1 1 7 

average men is a virtue, inasmuch as it counteracts 
selfish vagaries and impulses, and keeps alive the ideal 
of fidelity, is, for such sensitives as I am describing, a 
vice, in that it breeds disease of the brain and nerve- 
tissues, and prepares the way for all kinds of hypocrisies, 
distortions, and vicious desires. 

These sensitives are, properly speaking, " mediums " in 
the fullest sense of that word, interpreters and mediators 
by nature. But they need long and severe training 
before they are fit to translate into human speech the 
notations used by the Unseen Powers. And the training 
should consist, not in premature boasting of their 
personal intercourse with those Mighty Ones who have 
" gone before," and who now " rule us from their graves," 
but in humble and reverent expositions of the meaning 
of masters who are visibly present to correct them if 
they speak rashly, and of documents which can be 
consulted at first hand by whoever doubts the accuracy 
of the medium's interpretation. 

That seems to have been the meaning of what were 
called in Bible times " Schools of the Prophets." The 
younger prophet was trained by carrying messages from 
the older prophet to the people ; and not until he could 
give a message accurately from his human master to a 
stupid king, or a noisy rabble, without distorting it, was 
he allowed to speak as an authorised messenger from 
God. 

An analogous principle to that indicated above, the 
necessity for training hyperaesthetic sensitives, from the 
first, as interpreters, is the following. It is dangerous 
to educate boys and girls apart from each other ; but 
doubtfully wise to educate them together without the 



1 1 8 The Forging of Passion into Power 

normal safeguard of purity and honour, which consists, 
not in incessant spying by adults, but in making each 
sex responsible, to some extent, for the other ; the boys 
for the physical safety and intellectual thoroughness of 
the girls; the girls for the physical comfort and moral 
and artistic refinement of the boys. 

In all this question of personal influence, we should 
never lose sight of the great principle so lucidly ex- 
plained by E. Ray Lankester in the Quarterly Review of 
July 1904, viz. : — that two races or individuals may, by 
merely coming into contact without the appropriate 
precautions, generate some contagious disease of which 
neither showed any symptom while they kept apart. 
One may have been long generating the virus or other 
potential cause of disease, but have been at the same 
time growing, pari passu, immune to its action ; the 
other may be free from the virus and lack the immunity. 
When they come into contact, the virus may pass from 
the one which is immune to the one which is not so, 
and generate some horrible and unmanageable disease, 
either physical or mental. Never, therefore, allow your- 
self to think of a race-hatred, a race-shudder, a sense of 
unaccountable unreasoning aversion, as a pre-judice ; it 
is far more likely to be a pre-monition, a warning from 
the Unseen to avoid some grave danger. But the pre- 
monition comes from the Unseen, the As-Yet-Unknown ; 
and the shadow which it casts before may be very 
unlike the reality. Do not allow it to fix itself in your 
mind in its present shape, and become a pre-judice (a 
judgment without knowledge). Say to yourself, not : — 
" I hate this man because he is a Jew " ; or " I despise 
this man because he is a Kaffir " ; or " All Orientals are 



Adumbrations 1 1 9 

sly " ; or " All the yellow races are untrustworthy " ; 
but "The Unseen is warning me that this man holds, 
for the present, some danger for me." Act like the 
wary animal who hears in the forest some unfamiliar 
sound. Keep your eyes and mind open and your 
tongue silent, and wait to see what the Unknown is 
sending. 

Coming revelation casts its shadow before. When 
there is any stir in the region whence man receives 
inspirations, or when the minds of powerful thinkers are 
pondering over some problem as yet unsolved, sensitive 
brains are prone to see visions and dream dreams. 
Lack of understanding on this point gives rise to many 
of the manias recognised as such by the medical and 
legal authorities, as well as to many tragedies which 
pass outside of lunatic asylums and which tend rather 
to enrich the literature of romance than to foster man's 
control over himself and the world around him. 

When the shadow of on-coming revelation falls on 
the intellectual plane, it commonly produces delusions of 
many kinds ; when it falls on the emotional plane it 
produces various kinds of sentimental aberrations, of 
which we will speak presently. We will touch first on 
the intellectual delusions. 

On-coming revelation uses all kinds of faculties as 
screens on which to project its varied shadows ; and 
these are usually either inverted or distorted, or both. 
If the condition of underground passages described in 
Chapter XII. exists, the invert shadow projects itself as 
clairvoyance or clairaudience. To take the vision or 
voices as in themselves true representations of truth is 
superstitious and foolish ; but to dismiss them as worth- 



i2o The Forging of Passion into Power 

less and incapable of assisting revelation is worse. 
Each is a shadow; by comparing the various shadows 
we arrive at last at grasping the meaning of the 
revelation. 

A fertile source of error in interpreting revelation is 
to treat words written automatically, or spoken in trance, 
as if they belonged to the domain of language ; whereas 
in reality such utterances are more commonly mere 
indications of a Notation, and should be interpreted as 
such. If a naturalist wrote of a certain bird that it 
whistled c, a y 5, those would be much misled who insisted 
that he had described the bird as whistling for a cab ; 
but not more so than many who report on the utterances 
of trance-mediums or who publish automatic writings. 
An instance will perhaps make clearer what is here 
meant than any theoretical explanation. 

A " medium " sometimes declares that some person is 
" illegitimate," or a " bastard," or that his parents were 
" not truly married." When this is treated as language 
it may give rise to scandals. The great Powers of 
Revelation do not gossip with men, in earth-phraseology, 
taking seriously our parchment documents and registry- 
office ceremonials ! They use the ceremonials to bring 
to our minds facts in the great Notation of Sex which 
they have used in all ages as the type of the psychologic 
life. In that notation, two persons are treated as " not 
truly married " who have come together in a wrong frame 
of mind for fulfilling the best purposes of marriage. A 
"bastard" child is one whose parents did not so conduct 
their union as to secure to him a full share of such 
physical, intellectual, and spiritual vitality as they may 
have possessed. 



Adumbrations 1 2 1 

In general terms it may be said that any words or 
visible images which occur in a supposed communication 
from The Unseen should be treated not as conveying 
any message but as giving an indication of the notation 
in which the message is to be conveyed. 

Adumbrations come in dreams. " The brain of man 
functions normally towards Monism " ; whenever its 
discriminating faculties are not fully active, it puts 
together in new combinations impressions received 
separately. These combinations are stored in the 
unconscious mind and become part of its available 
material. In sleep, this whole process should go on 
outside of consciousness, or at least leave no trace on 
the memory. But if the sleep is not complete we 
remember some part of the process and call it a " dream." 

If the brain is in training, and functioning perfectly, 
it puts elements together in their true relations ; and the 
dream, if dream occurs, constitutes a direct revelation. 
But if the functioning is not perfect, various elements of 
thought are flung together without organisation, without 
regard to their true relation to each other. The dream 
is then only indirectly a revelation ; it reveals, not truth, 
but the precise manner in which the brain is, at the 
moment, inclined to err. If one dreams of finding gold 
or jewels, the dream may possibly be the reflection, on a 
normally working brain, of knowledge, residing in some 
other personality, of the real whereabouts of the treasure. 
But it is more probably something far more valuable, 
i.e. a revelation to oneself, for one's own self-guidance, of 
the precise manner in which one's brain is, at the time, 
inclined to work abnormally. If one dreams of finding 
jewels in some place where they are not to be found, 



122 The Forging of Passion into Power 

one should recognise that one's brain is, for the present, 
functioning abnormally towards easy optimism, and, for 
some days to come at least, discount all optimistic 
opinions one may be led to form, about money, business, 
or anything else. On the other hand, if one dreams of 
misfortune which is of impossible kind or which fails to 
occur, one should discount pessimistic apprehensions. 
This is the meaning of the old saying that dreams " go 
by contraries," i.e. should be interpreted as warnings of 
the direction in which one should not go except with 
great caution. 

When the time has nearly come for some new method 
in abstract science, mathematics, or logic, an adumbra- 
tion of it may fall on the brain of some sensitive, in the 
shape of a mechanical device. He may see in the air 
before him, as it were, as Macbeth saw the dagger, a new 
piece of mechanism, or a modification of some existing 
machine. If he had been trained in accordance with 
the suggestions of Chapter XI. it would not occur to him 
that he had any duty or function in regard to the vision, 
except to study it, till his discriminating faculties were 
once more in full activity. And when he found himself 
once more in phase A, he would look about the world 
around him, to see whether it needed, required, or wished 
for, the materialisation of his vision. It may be that 
some external need really does exist for the materialised 
embodiment of the thought-process which, as such, the 
world is not yet ready to understand. If so, the mortal 
who has seen a revelation in vision, and carried it out in 
objective fact, becomes a real inventor and possibly a 
prosperous individual as well as a benefactor to the 
human race. But in many cases there happens to exist 



Adumbrations 1 2 3 

no external use for the materialising of the vision. If 
the possessor of the sensitive brain in which it took 
shape is ignorant and untrained enough to suppose that, 
because he saw a thing in the air, he has a divine com- 
mission to project it in iron or stone, he may waste his 
life and his money — and perhaps other people's lives and 
money as well — on a gigantic invention, or on a suc- 
cession of small inventions, of no practical use to any 
one. Much waste of life and energy will be spared when 
it is understood that, in such cases, divine commission 
is to be inferred with certainty only at the point where 
inspiration from within meets some call or need from 
without. If no such need is perceptible, the seer of the 
vision may legitimately materialise it in " play," i.e. on a 
small scale, expending on it only his leisure time and 
spare cash. To do this will probably assist him in 
interpreting the utterance of the divine voice within, 
which as yet he only imperfectly apprehends. But he 
should take no step, in consequence of the vision, which 
seriously commits or hampers the lives of others, or even 
his own. If this be clearly recognised we shall be in a 
better position for understanding how to deal with the 
other class of shadows, i.e. those which fall on the 
emotional faculties and create sentimental disturbance. 
Two persons may have something in common as to 
which they can supplement each other, so that by com- 
bining for a time their two sets of faculty, or two stores 
of knowledge, they will be able to carry into effect some 
work which would not be done if they remained apart. 
Sensitives often feel an adumbration of this, in the shape 
of a strong personal attraction, which, if restrained, may 
take on the form of a real nostalgia ; a feeling as if 



1 24 The Forging of Passion into Power 

water would not quench thirst unless taken from that 
person's hand ; as if rest were unattainable except by 
that person's side. 

The trained seer knows that all this is adumbration 
of some future mutual fertilisation between the two; 
and, true to the habit of not taking action on any 
emotion or sensation of phase B till it has been passed 
in review in phase A, postpones the indulgence of the 
new desire till the anomalous intensity of it has com- 
pletely passed off and the mind has proved itself 
thoroughly awake once more by a renewed capability of 
taking an interest in ordinary life. But an untrained 
sensitive too often takes action on the adumbration while 
it is still overshadowing the judgment ; while he is in- 
capable of discerning what manner of substance is casting 
the strange shadow. Two men may set up in business 
together who would be more useful as correspondents 
than as partners. Or two women may break off their 
respective home ties in order to set up house together, 
and presently " get on each other's nerves " ; because the 
relation of daily intercourse over trivial household detail 
is unfavourable to the doing of the real task which was 
being set to them. Probably the most disastrous mis- 
take that is made in connection with the attraction of 
adumbration is when it occurs between persons of 
different sexes, at an age when sex-passion is strong. 
They imagine themselves " in love " with each other. 
They may be unsuited, either to live in common, to 
beget healthy children by each other, or to generate a 
harmonious atmosphere in which to bring up children ; 
and marriage between them may be in every way 
disastrous. On the other hand, it sometimes happens 



Hallucinations 1 2 5 

that the young people themselves, or their friends for 
them, have wisdom to " wait and see whether the fancy- 
passes off" before committing themselves irretrievably. 
In this case they too often allow themselves to drift 
permanently apart; lose the benefit of the adumbration 
as prophecy, and fail to accomplish what they might 
have done by a sober union of their diverse mental 
powers. 

Many of us spend our lives in alternately lamenting 
our poverty and grumbling at the quantity of rough 
gravel under our feet ; while we omit to notice that the 
gravel is rich auriferous quartz. If, instead of trampling 
it under foot, we picked it up, we might soon be rolling 
in well-hung carriages and able to go along a gravelled 
road in luxurious ease. 

When I have shown my class a diagram, and think 
they have looked at it long enough, I wipe the board 
black in readiness for the next thing I wish to write. 
I expect the class to accept the passing away of that 
which has served its purpose ; to face the blackness 
and blankness quietly ; and to sit still and listen to 
what I may be telling them, till I have occasion to 
write something fresh. As I am only a limited, fallible 
human teacher, the class always does show me that 
much respect. When God wipes something off His 
blackboard, some of His class drown His voice by 
howling and screaming hysterically, about the loss of 
that which was so precious ; and the rest jump up and 
scribble something out of their own heads, in order not 
to see the blankness. If my class behaved as God's class 
does, what should I do ? Not, I hope, lose my temper 
and my self-respect ; not curse them or burn them or 



i26 The Forging of Passion into Power 

inflict vengeful penalties. I think I should put my 
chalk down on the table and say : — " I can teach you 
nothing in this turmoil ; when you have done making a 
noise and are ready to listen, I will try to tell you some- 
thing." 

But neither I nor anyone could put the pupils back 
into the condition which they would have been in had 
they been quiet from the beginning. They may gain 
other wisdom from repentance and correction of their 
folly ; but they can no longer learn exactly what they 
would have learned had they not been guilty of it. 

Face illusions, hallucinations, and nervous terrors 
boldly ; and dare to let yourself know how they arose. 
You may not be able to conquer them ; but there always 
was a time in the history of each when you would have 
been able to conquer it. Be wise now ; do not let it 
conquer you; but sit still now and learn what you 
can from treating it as the consequence of some former 
mistake of yours. 

Nearly half a century ago, I woke one night screaming 
in terror. I had dreamed of a grey fiend, who had my 
dear dead father's features, but with a horrible expression 
on the face, and horns above it. His hands, ending in 
claws, were clutching at my hair ; and he was trying to 
drag me by it into hell. I saw his face and felt his 
clutch after I woke, and was, for some time, powerless 
to banish them. At times I see and feel them still. But I 
could, and did, and do, recognise the origin of the demon, 
and know him for what he is: — the child of my own 
folly and cruelty. 

My father lived in an atmosphere of medical reform 
and had a strong feeling against certain kinds of medical 



Hysteria 1 27 

practice in vogue in his day. I had once heard a doctor 
recommending for me a certain mode of treatment, 
insisting that it was harmless and answered well. To 
cut short the discussion father said, speaking metaphori- 
cally : — " It may answer for other people ; it could not 
for my child ; Hahnemann would rise from his grave to 
prevent it." Years afterwards, when my husband wished 
to send for an ordinary doctor to perform some little 
operation, I involuntarily cried out : — " Father would rise 
from his grave to prevent it," meaning at first only to speak 
in metaphor. But then, the spirit of dishonest self-will 
entered into me, and I repeated the sentence pretending 
to believe what I was saying. My husband, deceived by 
my air of conviction, feared to oppose me lest he should 
bring on delirium, and so desisted from his intention. 
In my sleep, the marvellous mechanism of the un- 
conscious mind transmuted the falsehood by which I had 
deceived my husband into a fiend which for a moment 
deceived myself, and which retained power to haunt me 
after I had detected his non-reality. While I keep this 
material brain, I cannot quite dislodge the fiend or be 
quite the same as I should have been had I never 
generated him. But I can be, and I hope am, a wiser 
woman for each of his visits. Every time he comes, he 
pays toll. The supreme folly would be to let him come 
and go, and leave no blessing behind him. 

We now come to the subject of hysteria. 

No fixed monomania, etc., is hysteria proper. All that 
is here said must be taken to refer to cases of polar- 
opposite phases. The lines of cleavage may run in any 
direction. There may be cleavage between very 
reasonable and very unreasonable moods; alternation 



1 28 The Forging of Passion into Power 

between melancholy and great cheerfulness ; between 
temper or impertinence and a desire to express contri- 
tion for the ill-tempered or impertinent speeches or acts ; 
between conceited impertinence to a teacher, and abject 
humility to, or slavish hero-worship of, that teacher. 

In all cases of polarity, one phase should be selected 
as the handle for curing the disease by the method of 
using the selected phase to put pressure on the other. 
The uninstructed nurse or caretaker very commonly 
selects the wrong phase, the one which she ought to 
leave alone, and neglects the phase which she ought to 
get hold of and educate. 

Do not argue against the dicta of the unreasonable 
phase ; but educate the patient, Jane, in her reasonable 
phase, to turn her attention on to the doings of Jane in 
the unreasonable phase; to issue her orders for the 
conduct of unreasonable Jane. Be a mere mechanical 
outside implement of reasonable Jane to coerce un- 
reasonable Jane into obeying her true master, i.e. 
reasonable Jane. 

In case of melancholy and cheerful phases, do not try 
to cheer melancholy Polly; still less reprove her for 
being melancholy. Let alone melancholy Polly. But 
when cheerful Polly wants to chatter and sing, etc., get 
her to be quiet and occupy her time in meditation on 
the pleasantness and beauty and goodness of things and 
people ; in storing up, in her unconscious brain, mind- 
pictures which may crop up and divert and cheer 
melancholy Polly. (You will not use words to Polly about 
unconscious cerebration, etc. ; but see that she does the 
thing : — check the great pouring off of the cheerfulness.) 

In alternations of conceit and over-humility, do not 



Hysteria 129 

snub the conceited Ethel. But say to the humble Ethel: — 
"If you really think I know so much better than you do, 
then take my advice now. Don't waste words praising 
me. Say nothing about me. Go and sit still and think 
steadily about what a wrong thing it is not to take my 
advice when you don't happen to feel, for the moment, so 
respectful towards me." 

In case of alternate ill-temper and contrition, allow the 
ill-temper full swing (so far as may be consistent with 
the safety and comfort of others). Do not moral-lecture 
about the temper itself. But say to the contrite Maggie : 
— " What you really did wrong was: to disturb others by 
expressing your mood ; to indulge your temporary 
mood by forcing notice of it on other people. It is just 
as wrong to do that about your contrite mood as about 
your angry one. If you are really sorry for what you 
did wrong, don't do the same wrong now this minute. 
I am busy ; my work and my repose were interfered 
with by your self-expression. Show you are sorry by 
consenting not to talk of your present feelings Go 
away and think, now, how wrong it is to insist on show- 
ing people just what you feel at the moment." In case 
there is any person to whom apology ought to be made, 
you can add : — " I will find an opportunity for you to 
make the apology, this evening " (or to-morrow or next 
week, as the case may be). Take care that the apology 
is not made under the strong impulse to do so, not while 
making it is a relief, not till making it is a slight 
effort. 

The polar-phases of hysteria are in some cases periodic ; 
in others, are determined by accidents of food, air, etc., 
etc. In others, again, by the mental influences from the 

9 



1 30 The Forging of Passion into Power 

outside. But however the time is determined, the 
Eternal Fact is that the reasonable, or cheerful, or contrite, 
or humble phase is one of receptivity of the " Cosmic 
Force," " Holy Ghost," " Divine Magnetism " (people use 
one or other of these expressions, according to their 
modes of belief, but I am speaking now only of the force 
as a force). The other phase, in each disease, is the 
slack-time, the ebb-tide, of receptivity. 

The whole hygiene of the matter depends on seeing 
that the patient does not expend the force outwardly dur- 
ing the time of reception ; but stores it up in her tissues, 
to be used later. 

The specific treatment for hysteria consists in teaching 
the organisation, not only to store up force in a general 
neutral way, but to pitch it on to the cure of the specific 
disease under treatment. The main difficulty of teach- 
ing all this consists in the fact that people object to 
thinking of the Holy Ghost as a calculable, manageable 
Force. The Holy Ghost, before it touches a human 
nerve-system, is " God " (at least you and I think so). 
But so much Holy Ghost as has been discharged on to 
human brain-tissue, is, henceforth, Force ; to be disposed 
of as medical experience and wisdom direct. We have 
an algebra of its mode of action, as precise as that of 
electricity (though, fortunately, far simpler). It is all 
very well when we have done a week's work and need 
re-laxation, to sing hymns in church about Divine 
Persons and our own emotions — if we find it refreshes 
us. But in working hours our business with God 
Almighty is to use Him for healing the sick, cleansing 
the lepers, and (especially) casting out the devil. Surely 
no reasonable Deity cares for that form of homage 



Hysteria 1 3 1 

which consists in flinging back in His face that divine 
gift, the algebra of the healing force, under the pretext 
that He is too sentimental to care for the Laws by which 
He acts (and which He forces us to act by or else suffer 
under). 

" Oh ! how love I Thy Law ; all the day long is my 
study in it ! " 



CHAPTER XIV 

MOBILITY AND DECISION 

What is the ultimate desideratum in education ? That 
the consciousness of the educated person should vibrate 
spontaneously in response to Nature's rhythmic motions. 

But are we all to be, as to our thought-life, mere free- 
thinkers ; all alike, able to sway in any direction ? 
Surely that would be as monotonous, as far out of line 
with Nature's plan of organised, correlated differentiation, 
as anything well could be. One equipoised Logan is 
interesting, as a type and as a symbol ; but it is only a 
type-symbol, not a general fact. 

Hardly any individual could, even if he would, become 

an unprejudiced thinker in all directions. Or I would 

rather say, it is not given to most of us to be, in any 

true sense, thinkers^ on all topics. The existence of 

what we call prejudice is due, not to this limitation, 

which is in itself normal, but to the fact that we ignore 

our limitations ; we try to do that which we are unfitted 

to do, and we therefore do it badly. Each of us has 

some one or more points at which his elasticity has been 

destroyed by something that happened either before or 

after his birth ; some point at which his mind is 

" biassed," i.e. feels the force of arguments on one side 

and not on the other ; some point at which he feels he 

132 



Mobility and Decision 133 

must take something for granted, at which he therefore 
fails to respond to the touch of logic, of truth. If you 
doubt this, find some Englishman who has been arguing 
about the rights of Europeans to colonise in Asia or 
Africa, and apply his arguments to the new-colonist 
microbes who have lately set up diphtheria in his child. 
Or find someone who has been trying to persuade the 
Irish to "forgive" the English settlers and come to 
friendly terms with them. Apply his arguments to a 
colony of rats which have settled in his cellar. In either 
case see what response is given to this reversal of 
direction ! x 

Each of us has some line along which his mind fails 
to respond to the touch of logic, of reason. Each can, 
if he will be honest with himself, detect and locate these 
points. Each one should be able to say to himself: — 
" If I try to judge about so and so, I shall judge falsely, 
therefore I will not try to judge of it at all." This is quite 
different from saying : — " As I think differently from the 
majority, I must be thinking falsely; therefore I will 
try to believe what others believe." Learn first to know 
for yourself in what lines your mind is incapable of 
moving freely both ways alike ; (and do not suffer your- 

1 Willingness to test one's thought by reversal does not imply 
any weakness in deciding either on the course of action which is 
one's own immediate duty, or on that which is right as tending 
towards the higher evolution of man. On the contrary, the honesty 
of one's decision is best proved by willingness to see what the 
argument really looks like when turned upside down. No painter 
doubts which is the right side up of his picture, or consents to its 
being hung permanently wrong side up ; but he turns it upside 
down for a few minutes, and judges of its true balance by looking 
at it in an inverted position. 



134 The Forging of Passion into Power 

self to try to think in those lines at all) ; secondly, as to 
any line in which you can think freely, learn to know 
when your mind has settled back to its true condition 
of equipoise after the exercise of rocking between 
opposite extremes. 

Free mobility in thought does not imply laxity of 
moral decision. Force for moral decision should be 
pumped in by the rocking movement of thought and 
emotion ; but moral decision should be taken when the 
rocking is over and the mind has come back to that 
position of rest in which one is no longer a mere free- 
thinker but a human being ; in which personal duties and 
claims reassert themselves ; in which one is the child of 
one's own parents, the servant of one's own nation, the 
outcome of one's own past, in which sweet reasonable- 
ness has re-asserted itself, and one is willing to accept, 
as indications of one's real nature, as aids to one's true 
evolution, as materials for future thought, those duties 
which the past has fastened upon one, duties which are 
really due to those other individuals whom the facts of 
one's past have linked to oneself. Force for decision 
should be pumped in by the freest rocking between 
alternate moods, opposite exaggerations; decisions 
should be formed at the time of equipoise. The habit 
should be acquired, early in life, of acting, constantly 
and resolutely, on decisions arrived at during the times 
of equipoise. Each such decision, after being acted 
on, affords fresh experience and materials for fresh 
thought ; each can be the occasion for a fresh pumping 
up of force by a fresh process of rocking. The habit 
should be formed young of acting in all moods on 
decisions taken in moods of equipoise. 



Mobility and Decision 135 

Some of us find this out " too late," as we call it ; too 
late to form the habit within our own immediate per- 
sonality. But it is never too late to help to form a 
world habit. If you are to be hanged to-morrow, 
society (of which you are a member, however pompously 
it may play-act at eliminating you) will be helped to 
come to sound convictions by your formulating them 
clearly to yourself to-day, will form good habits the 
sooner for your seeing to-day that they would be good 

to form. 

" Between the saddle and the ground 
I mercy sought and mercy found " 

said the old epitaph in the days when men believed that 
it was God's function to forgive individual man. Now 
we know that society is the sinner and individuals are 
its victims. Between the condemned cell and the 
halter, the victim may confer a boon upon the world. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE STEADYING OF THE IMAGINATION 

It is a very common notion that faith and morals are 
decaying owing to the decay of certain beliefs and 
opinions (about what happened or did not happen in 
Palestine nineteen hundred years ago, and about what 
is or what is not wholesome and advisable in regard to 
sex arrangements). And many people wish to keep the 
old beliefs in order to preserve faith and morals. 

This whole view of things seems to involve a large 
number of assumptions, and is a great hindrance to the 
process of forging passion into power. 

Why should not beliefs and opinions decay? The 
process has been going on ever since the beginning of 
history ; it appears to be quite normal and a necessary 
condition of progress. 

If the decay of something which ought to decay does 
harm to something which ought not to decay, this 
happens not because the former has decayed, but 
because the decayed matter has not been got rid of 
quickly enough. The remedy, for diseases born of the 
putrefaction of that which has served its purpose and is 
no longer useful, is not to preserve the putrefying matter 
but to get rid of it out of the way of the living organism. 
Why should we suppose that faith and morals will be 

136 



The Steadying of the Imagination 137 

any the healthier for our chaining them up to dead 
beliefs and opinions ? 

Then, again, I exceedingly doubt whether faith and 
the moral sense are decaying in England now to any 
very large extent, as yet. They are unmistakably going 
to pieces, but at present they seem to me to show 
symptoms rather of being battered to pieces alive than 
of decay. 

There are certain important things in human life 
which ought to be so arranged that they can be easily 
opened to let anything in or out, but which when shut 
should be securely fastened, so as to prevent useless, 
violent, and irregular banging to and fro. 

The same is true of the doors and windows of a house. 
About the doors and windows we all understand. They 
should open easily, shut easily, and be easily capable of 
secure fastening. But in moral and spiritual matters a 
mistake seems to prevail similar to that which was pointed 
out before about the mobile equilibrium. In these matters, 
if people find a door securely shut they suppose that it 
would be necessarily difficult to open, and when they 
find that it opens easily they suppose that it must 
necessarily go on banging till it has done serious damage 
to the house. This superstitious a priori assumption 
prevents them from setting quietly to work to adjust 
the fastenings so as to secure the maximum of utility 
in both directions. 

Chapter XVII. will suggest a system of door-handles 
suitable for our house of thought. But first we must say 
a few words about why some of the doors are at present 
stuck fast, and the others banging "fit to knock the 
house down," to use the homely housekeeper's expression. 



138 The Forging of Passion into Power 

In the old pre-scientific days, the thought-life of 
serious people, the family life of most decent people, 
and the parochial life of everybody, centred round 
certain things as to which comparatively few people 
had any doubts — things to which it was possible to 
attach some idea of permanence. There were certain 
ideas about marriage and the meaning of the word 
" purity," and certain opinions about things which were 
supposed to have happened in Palestine nineteen 
hundred years ago, which could be assumed as pre- 
misses in family conversation, because everybody knew 
that the other people in the house or the parish believed 
in them, more or less. And it was possible to associate 
with them some idea of permanence. When one 
member of a family passed over into the Unseen World 
it was possible for the mourners to conceive of him or 
her adoring Jesus in heaven as he had done on earth, 
if somewhat more ecstatically. It was possible to 
imagine the daughter who had passed away, kneeling 
before the Throne, wearing a white robe of virginity 
which was a glorified version of the confirmation frock 
which had been a common object of pious pride to her 
mother and her young sisters. 

Imagination had thus points of attachment in the 
realm of the permanent. 

On the other hand, among the elite of the intellectual 
world of now, where all beliefs and opinions have been 
burned away in the glow of a common delight in the 
search of truth, the same blessed possibility exists in a 
higher form. The individual thought-life and the family 
conversation centre round the search for truth, and when 
the father or child passes away there is nothing to 



The Steadying of the Imagination 139 

prevent one's imagining him or her still absorbed in 
the search for truth, still dropping germs of thought 
into the minds of those left behind. All this is pure 
imagination, we know. It proves nothing ; but also it 
disturbs nothing. The phenomenon which we call 
death has no power to disturb faith, which is thus left 
to develop a la grace de Dieu, without hindrance. Now 
it is the nature of faith to grow if circumstances make 
it possible that it should. But in a very large number 
of families now it is impossible for life and conversation 
to centre round anything that can be conceived of as 
having permanence. Each member of a family is afraid 
to speak at home of anything serious for fear of up- 
rooting somebody else's prejudices. Family life tends 
to centre round "thing-y things." Family affection, 
therefore, has no mode of expression or of exercise 
except on the side of attending to each other's transitory 
sensations, and of providing for each other little comforts 
or little luxuries, or, if there is money enough, great 
luxuries. The communal mind of the family is occupied 
about things that cost money, waste time, and fritter 
away earnestness — things which perish in the using. 

Now though it was possible to imagine a girl who 
has passed away adoring Jesus in a glorified confirma- 
tion frock, it is quite impossible to imagine her making 
eyes at a not too respectable potentate in any version, 
however glorified, of a Parisian costume. It is possible 
to imagine the departed wife receiving holy communion 
from the hands of Jesus or one of the Saints, while the 
husband by whose side she used to kneel still receives 
it at the hands of the parson. It is much more difficult 
to imagine the departed lady ordering in ice-cream from 



i4° The Forging of Passion into Power 

a fashionable confectioner, or haggling over the price of 
turtle soup. 

Or again, at the higher thought-levels, it is very easy 
to imagine the departed friend going on dropping germs 
of philosophy into one's mind as he had been doing for 
half a century before he passed over. It would be much 
more difficult to imagine him inspiring one with thoughts 
about which looks the more chic of two drawing-room 
wallpapers. The worldliness, the thing-y-ness of a life 
which has separated itself from idolatrous beliefs and 
has not yet attained to religious philosophy, is loosening 
imagination from its old attachments, without, in most 
cases, providing it as yet with any fresh ones. 

In some families, therefore, the imagination is left loose 
and batters faith to pieces. In others it is clumsily 
nailed up so that faith is etiolated for want of air and 
exercise. 

Again, when the church life provided rhythm, joy, 
interest, and perpetual change, there was less need for 
people to seek pleasures for themselves or each other. 
But life without some joy is very dull. If there is no 
joy in life except what comes from immediate sensation 
connected with the mechanical apparatus of enjoyment, 
one cannot be very scrupulous as to one's way of acquir- 
ing the possibility of providing enjoyment for the dear 
ones. And if we cannot get it out of that which is 
permanent, one must snatch incessantly at the transitory 
forms of it. Whereas, where life is one perpetual revel 
in the joys of either mystic belief or still more mystic 
truth-seeking, it becomes too valuable to be wasted on 
vices, and so full that over-much sensuous pleasure is not 
a temptation but an intrusion, a nuisance and a bore. 



CHAPTER XVI 

TEACHER-LUST 

The whole discussion about education is thrown into 

confusion by a foregone conclusion that some classes 

of desire are more specially evil lusts of the flesh than 

other classes of desire. All desires are lusts of the flesh 

in so far as they are prompted by impulses stored up in 

any part of the nervous tissue. The lust is good or bad 

according not to the precise part of the body in which 

it resides but to its being or not being correlated with, 

and subordinated to, the conditions of the environment, 

to some external need. The three great nerve-centres, 

stomach, sex-organ, and brain, have a parallel history 

and run parallel courses. And those of which we know 

the dangers form the best map for the one which we 

have to study. 

The stomach has for its function to absorb creatures 

of other species and build up one's own flesh by their 

destruction. To do this sufficiently for health and 

vigour is normal, and may be said to be the duty, the 

religion, of a stomach. Its first aberration is to perform 

this, its true function, in excess of any practical need or 

utility ; to build up a really healthy body, but to do the 

building in such a manner as diverts attention from the 

very things for which a healthy body is useful, to make 

141 



H 2 The Forging of Passion into Power 

the having a healthy body an object instead of a means 
to an end. The second lust of the stomach is to eat 
actual food, but in excess of what can be digested ; the 
part which is in excess diverts digestive force from that 
normal quantity which, if properly digested, would have 
built up healthy tissue, and so induces disease. The 
third lust of the stomach is to get put into itself things 
which have no tendency to build up tissue, which only 
momentarily amuse it with a false sensation of being 
satisfied. 

The sex-organ has a similar gamut ol degradation. 
Its function being to perpetuate the race, and especially 
the best types, its first aberration is to make the having 
of a large and prosperous family the be-all and end-all 
of existence, and to sacrifice all other considerations to 
making one's own posterity a large and important 
figure in the future of the human race. This was the 
ideal of some old Jewish patriarchs. The second step 
downhill is to put children into the world in excess of 
the present possibility of bringing them up healthy. 
The third is to amuse the sex-organ with sensations in 
ways which have no tendency to produce posterity. 

Now I do not wish to assert or imply either that the 
stomach has no function except that of digestion, or the 
sex-organs none but that of procreation. It may well 
be that each of these organs is on the road to develop a 
connection with some other function. I do not profess 
to judge for other people exactly when the indulgence 
of a desire is right and when wrong ; I am only pointing 
out a parallelism between three series of facts, as to 
which most people judge themselves and guide them- 
selves by different standards, and as to which they would, 



Teacher-Lust H3 

it seems to me, guide themselves more wisely if they 
judged them all three by the same standard. 

The third series is that which relates to teacher-lusts. 
The teacher (whether school-teacher, minister of religion, 
political leader, or head of a family) has a desire to make 
those under him conform themselves to his ideals. 
Nations could not be built up, nor children preserved 
from ruin, if some such desire did not exist and exert 
itself in some degree. But it has its gamut of lusts, very 
similar to those run down by the other faculties. First, 
the teacher wants to regulate the actions, conduct, and 
thoughts of other people in a way that does no obvious 
harm but is quite in excess both of normal rights and 
of practical necessity. Next, he wants to proselytise, 
convince, control, to arrest the spontaneous action of 
other minds, to an extent which ultimately defeats its 
own ends by making the pupils too feeble and automatic 
to carry on his teaching into the future with any vigour. 
Lastly, he acquires a sheer automatic lust for telling 
other people " to don't," for arresting spontaneous action 
in others in a way that destroys their power even to 
learn at the time what he is trying to teach them. 
What is wanted is that we should pull these three series 
tight so as to see their parallelism, and not go on fogging 
ourselves with any such foolish notion as that sex-passion 
is a lust of the flesh and teacher-lust a thing in itself 
pure and good, which may legitimately be indulged in 
to the uttermost. 

Few teachers now are so conceited as not to know 
that they have a great deal to learn, and that their 
methods need revising and improving, but the majority 
are seeking for improved methods of doing more of what 



H4 The Forging of Passion into Power 

they are already doing a great deal too much of. The 
improvement which they most need is to be brought 
under conviction, to be made see their conduct, their aims, 
their whole attitude towards their pupils and their work, 
in the light reflected on them from those of the drunkard 
and the debauchee. 






i 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE NEW IDEA OF ORDER 

Three main symbols of authority have shared between 
them the attention of the world : the slave-driver's whip, 
the shepherd's crook, and the conductor's baton. A 
reasonable man should make up his mind which of the 
three he prefers : which he will submit to when it is his 
turn to submit and wield when the time comes for him 
to rule. 

The slave-driver's whip has various modifications, con- 
ventionalised disguises : the sceptre, the mace, the 
truncheon, the cane. The appeal of them all alike is to 
immediate impressions on the senses. Their message is 
brutal but honest : — " If you will obey my will, your 
sensations shall be more agreeable than they will be if 
you thwart my will." 

The shepherd's crook is modified into a bishop's 
crozier. The functions of the two are similar : to keep the 
sheep from strenuous exercise in high altitudes, where 
their limbs grow fleet and their tissues tough ; to keep 
off wolves who might dispute possession of any portion 
of the flock with the man who considers himself its 
rightful owner ; to lead them into plentiful pasture, so as 
to make them fat and their flesh tender, and guide them 
cunningly at last into the yard of the slaughter-house 

i45 10 



H 6 The Forging of Passion into Power 

The whole system is simply one long deception— often 
of sentimental self-deception. 

The conductor's baton exerts no control except during 
certain hours of practice and of performance. Once the 
appointed time has expired, every man is free to go 
where he likes and do as he chooses. He is freer 
(because more able) than he would have been without 
his occasional episodes of servitude, to play by himself 
whatever tune he chooses, or to enter into effective com- 
binations with musicians not known in that conductor's 
orchestra. 

Friends, under which symbol will you serve? And 
by which will you prefer to rule ? 



But let us remember that even for the shepherds there 
is room in hell. 

We can all say to the Great Purifying Pulsator : — " If 
we make our bed in hell, Thou art there : forge and 
transform our Passion into Power." 



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